POETRY IN KOLKATA’S CAFÉS
Six months ago, when a group of Bengali writers in English decided to organise a regular poetry adda, they found refuge in Kolkata’s cafés, a popular place for Bengali poets until the 1980s.
“Cafés across Europe and Kolkata’s coffee houses have had poetry revolutions. We want to revive café poetry and help people express themselves,” says Joie Basu, a teacher who heads the Kolkata chapter of the group Poetry Couture.
The group was launched by public health professional Raghavendra Madhu as a ‘poetry adda’ in New Delhi early last year. In a few months, the initiative had found takers in Kolkata, where Madhu spent his childhood and youth. When he floated the idea of café poetry in Kolkata, he found help in the form of a software professional-cumwriter, a teacher, an advertising professional, a corporate trainer, and an ad filmmaker, all of whom are now approaching cafés for permission to hold poetry-reading sessions.
Café owners were more than willing, many offering free space and free drinks. “We wanted to take poetry to the people,” says Madhu. The events are open to all and anyone can read their work.
Each meet has a theme. “People had to sit on the floor of the venue of our February session, where the theme was ‘mysticism’,” says Ananya Chatterjee, who has had two anthologies of her poems published.