Prakriti Poetry Festival @ MCC

Students of the PG & Research Department of English are welcome to be a part of the Annual Poetry festival conducted by Prakriti Foundation, Chennai at Madras Christian College.
Poetry with Prakriti
17, 18, 19 December 2012

17 December: Arundhathi Subramaniam



About: Arundhathi Subramaniam is a poet and writer and on spirituality and culture. She has worked over the years as poetry editor, curator, and journalist on literature, classical dance and theatre. She divides her time between Bombay and a yoga centre in Coimbatore.

Arundhathi Subramaniam is the author of three books of poems:most recently Where I Live: New & Selected Poems  Bloodaxe Books, UK. Her prose works include the bestselling biography of a contemporary mystic Sadhguru: More Than a Life, Penguin  and a book on the Buddha (Book of Buddha ), Penguin Books (reprinted several times). As editor, she has worked on a Penguin anthology of essays on sacred journeys in the country (Pilgrim’s India ), and co-edited a Penguin anthology of contemporary Indian love poems in English (Confronting Love).

As a poet, she has been invited to literary conferences and festivals in various parts of India, as well as in the UK, Italy, Spain, Holland, Turkey, China, West Africa and Israel, and her work has been translated into several languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Italian and Spanish.

She has received the Raza Award for Poetry (2009), as well as the Charles Wallace Fellowship (for a 3-month writing residency at the University of Stirling) in 2003; the Visiting Arts Fellowship for a poetry tour of the UK (organized by the Poetry Society) in 2006; and the HomiBhabha Fellowship in 2012.

In 2004, she was invited to edit the India domain of the Poetry International Web , which grew into a significant web journal of contemporary Indian poetry.

Her poetry has been published in various international journals and anthologies, including Reasons for Belonging: Fourteen Contemporary Poets (Penguin India); Sixty Indian Poets (Penguin India), Both Sides of the Sky (National Book Trust, India), We Speak in Changing Languages (SahityaAkademi), Fulcrum No 4: An Annual of Poetry and Aesthetics (Fulcrum Poetry Press, US), The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets (Bloodaxe, UK) and Atlas: New Writing (Crossword/ Aark Arts).

Arundhathi has worked at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai, for several years, leading a discussion-based inter-arts forum named Chauraha. She has also been Head of Indian Classical Dance at the NCPA. She has written on literature, classical dance, theatre and culture for various newspapers (including The Times of India, The Hindu, The Indian Express, among others) since 1989. She has also been columnist on culture and literature for Time Out, Mumbai, The Indian Express and New Woman.

18 December 2012: Aime Hansen

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About: Aime Hansen is a poet from Estonia, a small country in Northern Europa.  She has published 6 collections of poetry  and 3 books of prose and is a member of Estonian Writers Union.  Aime is also a performance artist and a visual artist. She graduated from the university with the Masters Degree in linguistics and has worked as a journalist , editor and interpreter. Currently a freelance writer.

Aime writes and performs poetry both in English and Estonian. She started to write in English while living in London for an extensive period of time. Her poetry has been described as visual, playful and colourful.  Aime’s earlier style of writing was quite introvert. In London she started to write poetry that was more social, extravert  and directly addressing the audiences.  She started to use monologues, dialogues  and storytelling. Says Aime: “ It was a lot of fun, to pen new poems each week and try them out on the audience. “

Aime’s favourite themes in both prose and poetry are the mysteries of life and secrets of the Universe, relationships between men and women  etc. Prose involves suspense stories, adventures,  love stories and travel writing. Poetry collections in Estonian: “The wind of time”, “The land of the king of the fishes”, “The journey to the island of snakes”,  “I was the angel of the sea” plus one collection in English and one in Finnish.  Her first collection of short stories , “Stories found from travel trunk”, 2009, won a literary prize in Estonia.  At the festival Aime will perform in English.

19 December 2012: Randhir Khare



About: Randhir Khare is an award winning poet, writer, artist and teacher who has written more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, translations from tribal dialects  and cultural documentation.  His work has inspired national and international puppet theatre productions, been performed along with various traditional and contemporary musicians and bands, set to music by A.R.Rahman  and has been translated into Bengali, Marathi, Hindi, Bulgarian and French. 



His poetry has been used in creative arts and educational workshops in various cities and small towns in the country as well as in Ireland and England. These include: projects and exhibitions for One World Week, self development workshops for women, professional workshops for Teachers, Cultural Education Courses in Colleges of Education, Creative Projects with Minority Groups and Refugees, Education Classes for Traveller Education Support Groups. Readings of his work have taken place during lecture presentations on India, exhibition openings and Arts Festivals in Dublin and rural Ireland.



As an artist, he has had five solo exhibitions and his work is in the collections of several private collectors in the country as well as in the UK, USA and South East Asia.  He has also illustrated a number of his own books.

His cultural documentation work has included documentation of the folkloric traditions of the Bhil, Bhilala, Kota, Toda, Nari Kurava, Katkari and other traditional communities from north and south Gujarat, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, translation of tribal folklore and poetry and the promotion of traditional music and lore. He has recently founded The Living Heritage Movement which financially supports performers and practitioners of traditional forms and lore.

He is an acclaimed story teller and has spent a large part of his life promoting traditional folklore.

He has had five solo exhibitions of his pen and ink drawings and paintings and has illustrated a number of his own books.

Among his numerous awards is  The Gold Medal For Poetry (by the Union of Bulgarian Writers), the Sanskriti Award For Creative Writing and the Winter Cultural Festival Poetry Prize.

Presently, he is Director of the Rewachand Bhojwani Academy Director, Kahani India (For The Promotion of Traditional Storytelling Forms)
Executive Editor, The Heritage India Magazine.
Founder-Director, The Living Heritage Movement.