2017 - 3

Rhythm Divine Poets conducted a poetry workshop at The Future Foundation School on 20th July 2017. The guest poet at the event was Sonnet Mondal.

Rhythm Divine Poets were in collaboration with Kaafiya for the city-based "Kaafiya Milao" session for the city Kolkata. The winners of the week-long session were Nikita Parik, Yitzak Gate and Moinak Dutta for their poems on Kolkata.

Rhythm Divine Poets were the creative partner of Soul Sutra, organized by Rotaract Club of Central Calcutta at Doodle Room on 1st July 2017. The event saw special performance by the group as well as judging the Prose and Poetry slams.

Rhythm Divine Poets hosted Mumbai-based performance artist Vibha Rani at Wabi Sabi on 17th June for a session of Poetry and Performance. Glimpses from the event.

Event - Kolkata - 29th July 2017

Announcement!

PHILIP NIKOLAYEV - Featured Poet

CALCUTTA FLOWERS The bard addressing with his weightless quill the human will in its futility observes the florist with bunched and garlanded conflorescences who supplies his goods to dozens of local cults and is quite the worshipful man himself. The sorry samsara-swathed dusty sun reemerges among the clouds and the micromonsoon wrung out of a nowhere pit by Indra's unknowable hand is over. Magic is the name of oblivion and the reed pen and flowers now are merely methods of forgetting even the unforgivable. For the continuous self must forget itself in time where everything reduces to its opposite in the end and the end is merely the other side of a fixed beginning. Here the marigolds in their January loveliness and buckets on the sidewalk seem to know their fate. They silently belong to a caste; they are on the wrong, the chantless end of sacrifice. But here, here in their flimsy present they seem reconciled to their route of migration. The sidewalk enshrines many-handed anonymity. This marigold was a poet long ago.

(Published in Dusk Raga, Writers Workshop, Kolkata, 1998)

Bio:
Philip Nikolayev is a Russo-American poet living in Boston. He is editor of FULCRUM, a serial anthology of poetry and criticism. His poetry collections include Monkey Time (2003) and Letters from Aldenderry (2006). A collection of his Indian poems, Dusk Raga, was published by the Writers Workshop in Kolkata in 1998. New volumes are forthcoming from MadHat and Poetrywala.

AMPAT KOSHY - Featured Poet

The Real Meaning of Reincarnation

The day I was born my father and mother loved each other The day I was born was the day I was born The day I was born was the day I met Jesus The day I was born was the day I was married The days on which I was born were the days on which my daughters and son were born The day I was born was the day my son was discovered as having autism The day I was born was the day on which I fell in love The day I died was when my sister died The days on which I died were when my father and mother died The day I died was when I realized that original sin is not a myth The day I died was when I realized my daughters were girls in a world that is against women The day I died was when i realized my son being autistic would not ensure better treatment for him from many in the world but worse The day I died was the day I learned that it also meant worse treatment even from some who knew it to me and my wife and daughters and surprisingly enough they were not my enemies but usually said they were my friends The day I died was the day i realized I loved those who did not love me back enough and was loved by those I did not love back enough The day I died was the day I realized the story about Eve and Adam was not a myth The day I died was the day I lost my innocence in understanding that love is not enough The day I died was the day on which I realized I had failed more than anyone else on earth The day I died was the day I realized that it was love that was a myth, and (wo)man, not God. Between being born and dying is the silence of the lamb the wordlessness of my son is the space between the words on the printed page is the gap between the teeth the one between the lips the gash or wound between a woman's legs the pause between the spoken words Between being born and dying is the purity of the truth that each man and woman should be crucified I, being the chief of sinners but only one was Between being born and dying is the period of living waxing and waning to reach fullness and then fading into nothing sinner or saint man or woman into ashes or dust.

Bio
Dr Koshy A. V. is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English at the College for Arts and Humanities for Men, Jazan University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He has written, co-written or co-edited sixteen books of criticism, fiction and poetry to his credit with authors like A.V. Varghese, Gorakhnath Gangane, Angel Meredith, Dr Madhumita Ghosh, Dr Zeenath Ibrahim, Dr Rukhaya MK and Dr Bina Biswas and one of them 'A Treatise on Poetry for Beginners' was reprinted as 'Art of Poetry.' He is a Pushcart Poetry Prize nominee (2012) and twice Highly Commended Poet in Destiny Poets UK ICOP (2013, 2014) and he was thrice featured in Camel Saloon’s The Hump for best poem/editor’s pick and once for best poem in Destiny Poets UK Website. Even as a child he won the Shankar's international award for writing. He is a reputed critic and expert on Samuel Beckett besides being a fiction writer and theoretician.. He has edited or co-edited many books including A Man Outside History by Naseer Ahmed Nasir and Inklinks: An Anthology by Poets Corner and also novels for Lifi. He co-edited Inklinks:An Anthology and Umbilical Chords: An Anthology on Parents Remembered. He instituted the Reuel International Literary Prize in 2014 and runs an autism NPO with his wife Anna Gabriel. He administers with the help of other many literary groups and pages on Facebook. His poems have been studied in a research paper by Dr Zeenath Ibrahim and Kiriti Sengupta in My Dazzling Bards and also translated into Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, German, Portugese, Spanish and Malayalam. He won World Bank’s Urgent Evoke and participated in European Union’s Edgeryders. He has been interviewed extensively. He has other degrees, diplomas and certificates to his credit besides his doctorate on Beckett. His latest books are Allusions to Simplicity , Scream and other Urbane Legends and Silhouette 1 and 2 and other short fiction edited with Reena Prasad and Michele Baron with whom he also co-edited the Significant Anthology.

MICHAEL ROTHENBERG - Featured Poet

SERENITY SPRING

One day the story changed

And those people who want to help out

They’re incompetent. All of them!

Breeding little dogs to carry around

In a purse. A conspiracy of blue jays

Indecipherable spider webs

Surveillance in every corner of the forest

You can only imagine

What the clouds say

Suspicious signals from the sun

A revolt of hurricanes!

                        *

“What have we done to the earth?”

            For years Industry told us

            About “Better living through chemistry”

            And now that we don’t like what Industry

            does we pretend they never said it

Listen to squirrel chatter

Militant moles message underground

Agitate the atmosphere

Until there’s nothing left of hope

                    (Only holes and shelled nuts)

            Fracking, fracking, fracking, cracking

The Great American Optimism!

Corporate Venture Cyclops!

                        *

            There is no peace

            The Buddha

            Buried

            Buried and unearthed

           

            Buried and unearthed

            Ashes to ashes

            Vanity to vanity

                                    Greetings Serenity!

                        *

I spoke to myself on the deck last night

We reconciled beneath the stars

Waltzed to a raccoon love song

While all the fools in paradise watched

Today the silent sun grows

And burns and burns

I remember pink towels on the garden chair

My mother’s cool gardenia hand

On my fevered head. A difficult breath

Still hidden in the leaves . . .

                        *

There are two worlds I know

The one I run from and the one I hold on to

For dear life. I don’t own either

Beware of the purple doppelganger!

Serenity loiters in fern hollow . . .

So I watch the red geraniums grow

And help them along the best I can

Sweet Serenity Spring.

First published in Wake Up and Dream (MadHat Press, 2017)

Bio:

Michael Rothenberg is editor of BigBridge.org and co-founder of 100 Thousand Poets for Change. His most recent books of poetry include Drawing The Shade (Dos Madres Press, 2016) and Wake Up and Dream (MadHat Press, 2017). A bi-lingual edition of Indefinite Detention: A Dog Story is due out from Varasek Ediciones, Madrid, Spain in Fall 2017.  He lives in Tallahassee, Florida.