Golchakkar: Poetry and the Pandemic
Golchakkar Series - The May panel of our virtual literary talk featured Sonnet Mondal, Anju Makhija, Aakriti Kuntal, and Ashwani Kumar: Poetry and the Pandemic. Hosted by Kiran Bhat.
The Chakkar welcomes to our reading series, GOLCHAKKAR. Every month, we will host an online panel discussion of Indian artists in conversation with the world.
Poetry and the Pandemic: Sonnet Mondal, Anju Makhija, Aakriti Kuntal, and Ashwani Kumar
This month on Golchakkar, we were joined by poets Sonnet Mondal, Anju Makhija, Aakriti Kuntal, and Ashwani Kumar for a poetic response to the pandemic’s catastrophic second wave in India. Featuring poetry readings and a discourse on crisis, sorrow, and hope. The session was hosted as ever by world traveler, polyglot, and author Kiran Bhat.
Participants
SONNET MONDAL is an Indian poet, editor, and author of Karmic Chanting (Copper Coin 2018) and Ink and Line (Dhauli Books 2018). He has read at literary festivals in Macedonia, Ireland, Turkey, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Germany, Italy, Ukraine, Hungary, and Slovakia. His writings have appeared in publications across Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia. Founder director of Chair Poetry Evenings - Kolkata's International Poetry Festival, Mondal edits the Indian section of Lyrikline (Haus für Poesie, Berlin) and serves as editor in chief of Verseville.
ANJU MAKHIJA is a Sahitya Akademi award-winning poet, playwright and translator. She has written three poetry collections. She co-translated Seeking the Beloved, the mystical verse of Shah Abdul Latif, and co-edited anthologies related to partition, women and youth. Her plays have been staged in India and abroad. She was on the Sahitya Akademi Advisory Board for 5 years. She’s also the co-founder of the Pondicherry / Auroville Poetry Festival. Her book, Mumbai Traps, will be out shortly.
AAKRITI KUNTAL is a poet and writer from India. Her work has been featured in various literary magazines including The Blue Nib, Rasputin: A Poetry Thread, Poetry at Sangam, The Bombay Literary Magazine, and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal among others. She was awarded the Reuel International Prize 2017 for poetry, was a finalist for the RL Poetry Award 2018, and received a nomination for the Best of the Net.
ASHWANI KUMAR is a poet, writer, and professor at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. His poems—widely published, anthologized and translated in various Indian languages—are noted for ‘lyrical celebration’ of garbled voices of memory and subversive ‘whimsy’ quality. Recently, his select poems titled Architecture of Alphabets have been translated in Hungarian for a special volume. He is co-founder of Indian Novels Collective to promote translation of classic novels of Indian language. He is also a visiting fellow at leading global universities and one of the chief editors of Global Civil Society at London School of Economics.
KIRAN BHAT is an Indian-American novelist, short-story writer, and educator. He is the author of We of the Forsaken World, Afora Adentro, Autobiografia, Kiran Speaks, Tirugaatha, and more. An avid world traveler, polyglot, and digital nomad, he has currently travelled to over 130 countries, lived in 18 different places, and speaks 12 languages. He currently lives in Melbourne.
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