Subodh Sankar still remembers the first time he heard the Odia poet Bishnu Mohapatra read his work at Atta Galatta, a decade or so ago. “He read in Odia, and it gave me goosebumps…without understanding a word of what he read,” says the co-founder of Atta Galatta. “That is the power of poetry,” believes Subodh, who, with a core team of poets and poetry lovers, conceptualised the Bengaluru Poetry Festival as a celebration of all things poetry, back in 2016.
Bishnu, “a very, very senior poet,” will be one of the many speakers who will be part of the 9th Edition of the Bengaluru Poetry Festival, which will be held in the city on August 2 and 3. Some of the others include Ramya Nambessan, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, Sandhya Mridul, Justh, Jeet Thayil, Madhan Karky, Danish Husain and Bilal Moin.
“There are plenty of big names that we are looking forward to at the festival,” says Subodh, adding that the festival ends with a performance by Parvathy Baul. Also, as always, the festival will showcase poets in multiple languages, including Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, Urdu, Bangla, and Mizo. “We are very proud of the fact that we have been able to bring poetry in so many different languages to the city.”
Actor Sandhya Mridul
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Special Arrangement
This year, for the first time, the festival will be held at the Indiranagar Sangeetha Sabha, “a standard performance venue with a beautiful outdoor area”, instead of a hotel. “In that sense, the festival has significantly reduced its footprint and gone back to nature, something we are proud of,” says Subodh.
Another major change in this edition, he adds, is the inclusion of many more poets from outside the country.” These include Sri Lankan poet Shirani Rajapakse, American writer and poet Claudia Keelan, Singaporean poet and translator Daryl Lim Wie Jie and Emirati poets Ali AlMaazmi and Amal Al Sahlawi, “both of whom will be reading in Arabic.”
Parvathy Baul
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Special Arrangement
The festival is instituting a fellowship for young, unpublished poets aged 18-24, to be announced on August 3, titled the Utkarsh Poetry Fellowship, in association with Dr Neena Verma, a medical doctor from Delhi. The fellowship, another first for the festival, is named after Neena’s son, a poet himself who passed away at a young age, got kick-started about a month and a half ago, when an announcement for the fellowship was made, explains Subodh. “We’ve had an overwhelming response, with a couple of hundred people responding, and now it is going through the jury process.”
The children’s festival is a crucial aspect of the programming
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Special Arrangement
This edition will feature approximately 86 speakers, including the facilitators of the children’s festival, which will take place in parallel with the main festival, a crucial aspect of the programming. “For the last four years, we have had a children’s festival happening alongside the poetry festival,” says Subodh, who believes that it is a great way to introduce children to the world of books. “Children who read, turn into adults who read and adults who read turn into writers,” he says. “So we take any opportunity we can to bring children to a literary atmosphere.”
The 9th edition of the Bengaluru Poetry Festival will be held on August 2 and 3 at the Indiranagar Sangeetha Sabha. Entry is free and all are welcome.
Published – July 25, 2025 08:35 am IST
