Matwaala Program

Matwaala South Asian Diaspora Poets Festival Austin, TX, USA August 2, 2015 10 am-7:30 pm

Venue: Casa De Luz, Austin, Texas

Sponsored by Austin Poets International, Austin Community College, and The Poetry Caravan

Matwaala, South Asian Diaspora Poets Collective, is a community of poets whose origins go back to South Asia. The name Matwaala evokes bonding and bonhomie, fun and funk, creative adventure and freedom, artistic assertiveness and non-conformity. A Hindi/Urdu word, it was the name of a radical literary magazine edited by the poet Nirala from Kolkata a century ago. Matwaala is used for someone who is drunk, but the word is used more often in a transferred sense, for someone who is a free spirit. As poets, we are, of course, drunk on language and words. We aim to promote South Asian poetry and collaborate with other arts in North America. The mission of our initiative is to encourage solidarity, promote members’ work, and increase awareness of South Asian poetry in the mainstream American literary landscape.

Rather than self-promotion, we realize the need to steadily progress as a group by offering our strengths to the collective. Poets who come to Matwaala would need to answer the question what they can do for the group while benefitting from the group. Matwaala intends to maintain high standards in writing while avoiding cliques.

This poetry festival is our first venture that is inaugurated by poet Keki Daruwalla of New Delhi. Noted South Asian poets from the US and Canada, who form the core of Matwaala, as well as local area poets are the inspiration for this festival. Poetry readings, a youth reading, panels and papers are offered, followed by a reception and a cultural segment. We are delighted with the whole-hearted support we have received from Austin Poets International, Austin Community College, and the Dialog Institute. Thanks to such overwhelming support from both the South Asian and the local communities, we are able to showcase South Asian American poetry. Matwaala’s vision is indeed to establish South Asian poetry as part of American literature.

2

MATWAALA 2015 Saturday, August 1, 2015 Gˊ˝ˑˎ˛˒˗ː ˘ˏ P˘ˎ˝˜ 10:30 - 12:00 ACC Department of Arts and Humanities: Gathering of Poets Wˎ˕ˌ˘˖ˎ L˞˗ˌˑ ˊ˗ˍ ˙˘ˎ˝˛ˢ 1:00 - 3:00 Welcome Lunch for poets and artists @11103 Yucca Dr, Austin 3:00 Thom the World Poet & Darrell Mayers: Improvisation Poetry D˒ˊ˕˘ː˞ˎ I˗˜˝˒˝˞˝ˎ 6:30 - 9:30: Reception @Raindrop Turkish Center, 12400 Amherst Drive, #108, Austin Media presentation by Poet Phinder Dulai:

Title: "Time-lapse-migration - from Hamburg to Vancouver" A story of the S.S. Komagata Maru. Exploring the archive of surveillance and documentation that was researched to recreate the story of a ship that carried 376 South Asians to the West coast in 1914. This is the story of global maritime migrations told from the voice of the anthropomorphized ship, as explored in the book “dream / arteries.”

Poetry readings by the Poets

3

Sunday, August 2, 2015 M˘˛˗˒˗ː Sˎ˜˜˒˘˗ F

O

&P

R

10:00 - 10:10 Welcome by Festival Director, Usha Akella 10:10 - 10:15 Introduction to Keki Daruwalla 10:15 - 10:25 Opening remarks by Poet of Honor, Keki N. Daruwalla 10:25 - 10:55 Poetry Reading, Keki Daruwalla 10:55 - 11:05 Paper Presentation: Anis Shivani

Title: Why I Don't Think of Myself as an Immigrant or Diaspora Poet

11:05 - 11:20 Poetry Reading: Pramila Venkateswaran 11:20 - 11:35 Poetry Reading: Saleem Peeradina 11:35 - 11:45

Tea Break

G˞ˎ˜˝ P˘ˎ˝˜ 11:45 - 12:00 Poetry Reading: Ravi Shankar 12:00 - 12:10 Paper presentation: Sasha Parmasad

Title: Nothing for intellectuals

12:10 12:25 Remarks Ongoing 12:40 12:55 -

12:25 Poetry Reading: Anis Shivani 12:40 Book release: The Rosary of Latitudes

by Keki, Ravi & Dustin Pickering Photo Exhibit by Rama Tiru, Austin Photographer 12:55 Poetry Reading: Usha Akella 1:05 Paper presentation: Ravi Shankar

Title: Refracting Bhakti: How Versification reveals the Urban Vedic 1:05 - 2:00

Lunch

4

Sunday, August 2, 2015 Aˏ˝ˎ˛˗˘˘˗ Sˎ˜˜˒˘˗ Y˘˞˝ˑ P˘ˎ˝˜, L˘ˌˊ˕ P˘ˎ˝˜ ˊ˗ˍ M˞˕˝˒˖ˎˍ˒ˊ P˛ˎ˜ˎ˗˝ˊ˝˒˘˗

2:00 - 2:30 Youth Reading: Anannya Akella, Isha Chhabra, Sraavya Danala, Sara Garg, Sanjana Kumar, Abhra Kundu, Aria Merchant & Rehana Sheikh 2:30 - 2:40 Local Poets: Archana Vemulapalli, Mamata Misra & Debangana Banerjee 2:40 - 2:55 Local Poet: Shubh Bala Schiesser 2:55 - 3:25 Multimedia Presentation & Reading: Phinder Dulai

Title: "Time-lapse-migration - from Hamburg to Vancouver" A story of the S.S. Komagata Maru. Exploring the archive of surveillance and documentation that was researched to recreate the story of a ship that carried 376 South Asians to the West coast in 1914. This is the story of global maritime migrations told from the voice of the anthropomorphized ship, as explored in the book “dream / arteries.”

C˞˕˝˞˛ˊ˕ Sˎː˖ˎ˗˝ 3:25 - 3:35

Young Violin Virtuoso: Kai Cole

3:35 - 3:45

Tea Break

5

G˞ˎ˜˝ P˘ˎ˝˜ ˊ˗ˍ Pˊ˗ˎ˕ D˒˜ˌ˞˜˜˒˘˗ 3:45 - 3:55

Paper presentation: Saleem Peeradina

3:55 - 4:10 4:10 - 4:20

Poetry Reading: Sasha Parmasad Paper presentation: Pramila Venkateswaran

Title: "The 70s Poetry Scene: Or What I Learnt in Poetry Kindergarten"

Title: “Against Tokenism: Why is it useful to apply the VIDA count to South Asian poets in the US?

4:20 - 4:40 Panel: Poets Q&A, Moderator: Saleem Peeradina 4:40 - 4:50 With Gratitude- Saleem Peeradina and Pramila Venkateswaran 4:50 - 5:00

Tea Break

C˞˕˝˞˛ˊ˕ Sˎː˖ˎ˗˝ & Rˎˌˎ˙˝˒˘˗ 5:00 - 5:25

Natyalaya School of Dance: Antariksha -

This is a thematic dance drama that expounds on the concept of Shiva sending forth the panchabhutas - five elements of fire, water, earth, wind and ether to create the cosmos. The dance reflects the circular motions of celestial objects in Bhramari and the silence within and without in nishabdam. segments. Shiva calls the five elements back into himself in the final pralaya.

Music and choreography by Anusham Dance group, Chennai.

Directed by: Manassa Datta, Dancers: Manassa Datta, Anannya Akella, Dhanashree Ram, Shruthi Krish, Shruthi Ramachandran, Bhavana Dokka, Vanitha Dorairaj, Radhika Rajalal, Manjula Andakuri & Kashmira Madina.

5:30 - 7:30 5:30 - 7:30

Music Band: Julie Slim Reception

6

Biographies Usha Akella is an internationally known poet who has been invited to numerous international poetry festivals. Her most recent book The Rosary of Latitudes (Transcendent Zero Press, Houston) was released in June 2015.She was selected as a cultural ambassador for Austin in 2014-15.

She has read and published widely. She has authored three books and produced and directed one musical. She is the founder of ‘The Poetry Caravan’ in Austin, TX and Greenburg, NY. The Caravan offers readings and workshops to the disadvantaged in women’s shelters, AIDS Centers, senior homes and hospitals. She also writes travel articles, whimsical prose and interviews artists, poets and scholars. She edits a yearly Diaspora issue for www.museindia.com.

Keki N. Daruwalla is one of India’s leading poets and lives in Delhi. His Collected Poems were published in 2006 by Penguin India. He won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for Asia in 1987 for his book "Landscapes". His novel "For Pepper and Christ"--a historical novel— was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize (Asia and UK) in 2010. His latest books (2014) are Fire Altar: Poems on the Persians and the Greeks" and a short story volume entitled "Islands". Another Novel on the Parsees is slotted for publication this year. Daruwalla was a Queen Elizabeth Fellow at Oxford for a year. He was also special Assistant to the Prime Minister in 1979. He retired as Chairman JIC. Recently he was a Member of the National Commission for Minorities.

7

Phinder Dulai is the Surrey-based author of dream / arteries (Talonbooks) and two previous books of poetry: Ragas from the Periphery (Arsenal Pulp Press, 1995) and Basmati Brown (Nightwood Editions, 2000). His work has been published in Canada, the US and Abroad. Dulai is a co-founder of the South of Fraser Inter Arts Collective (SOFIA/c) and this fall will be co-convening with Surrey Art Gallery curator Jordan Strom Sound Thinking 2015 - The City Inverse: Polyphonic Utterance and Kinetic Sites on November 29th, 2015. His most recent poems are published in Canada and Beyond, a Canadian Studies journal published in Vigo and Huelva, Spain.

Sasha Kamini Parmasad, educator, visual artist, and award-winning writer, is the daughter of a Trinidadian historian-poetsongwriter and a lawyer. Sasha began composing poetry at age five. From age six she was performing her father's compositions—poetry, Indian Trinidadian folk songs, folk tales, calypsos—before thousands, at a national level in Trinidad and Tobago.

Sasha holds degrees from Williams College and Columbia University and has taught a variety of writing courses to youth, undergraduates, and adults in programs at Columbia University, as a Lecturer at Maharishi University of Management, and in community contexts. Sasha's novel, Ink and Sugar, placed third in the national First Words Literary Contest for South Asian American Writers (2003), and her poetry placed first in the annual Poetry International Competition (2008).

8

Saleem Peeradina is the author of First Offence (Newground, 1980), Group Portrait (OUP, 1992), Meditations on Desire (Ridgeway Press, 2003), and Slow Dance (Ridgeway Press, 2010). He edited Contemporary Indian Poetry in English (Macmillan, 1972). A new collection of poetry, Final Cut, awaits publication. Meditations on Desire was recently published in Arabic translation by Kalima Publishers in Abu Dhabi, UAE. His poetry is represented in most major anthologies of Indian, South Asian, and Asian American writing including The Oxford India Anthology of Poetry (1994) and 60 Indian Poets, Penguin Books (2008). His poetry continues to appear in journals both in print like World Literature Today, Kavya Bharati, Atlas, and Wasafiri. Ariel has also featured a long interview with him. The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Poets (1994) carries an entry on Peeradina. Peeradina is Professor Emeritus at Siena Heights University, Adrian, Michigan.

Anis Shivani’s poetry books include My Tranquil War and Other Poems (2012) and the forthcoming Soraya: Sonnets (2015). He has also finished a new poetry book called Death is a Festival.

His poetry appears in journals like Boston

Review, Threepenny Review, Iowa Review, Harvard Review, Black Warrior Review, Volt, Epoch, Fence, Denver Quarterly, Boulevard, Times Literary Supplement, and elsewhere.

Anis is also a fiction writer and critic, the author of Karachi Raj (2015), The Fifth Lash and Other Stories (2012), Anatolia and Other Stories (2009), Against the Workshop (2012), and the forthcoming collection Literature in an Age of Globalization

(2015). Anis lives in a doomed gothic mansion with his cat Fu in Houston, Texas.

9

Pushcart Prize winning Ravi Shankar is the founding editor and Executive Director of Drunken Boat, one of the world’s oldest electronic journals of the arts, and the author/editor/publisher of ten books and chapbooks of poetry, including What Else Could it Be (Carolina Wren, 2015), winner of National Poetry Review Prize, Deepening Groove (TNPR, 2011) and the finalist for the Connecticut Book Awards, Instrumentality (Cherry Grove, 2004). He has forthcoming with Zubaan Books in India a translation done with Priya Sarukkai Chabria of 8th century Tamil poet/saint, Andal. Along with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, he edited W.W. Norton’s Language for a New

Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond, called “a beautiful achievement for world literature” by

Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer. He has won a Pushcart Prize, been featured in The New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education, appeared as a commentator on the BBC, the PBS Newshour and NPR, received fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony and the New York State Council of the Arts, and has performed his work around the world. He is currently Chairman of the Connecticut Young Writers Trust, on the faculty of the first international MFA Program at City University of Hong Kong and a Professor of English at Central Connecticut State University.

Pramila Venkateswaran, poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island, and author of Thirtha (Yuganta Press, 2002), Behind Dark Waters (Plain View Press, 2008), Draw Me Inmost (Stockport Flats, 2009), Trace (Finishing Line Press, 2011), and Thirteen Days to Let Go (Aldrich Press, 2015) is an award winning poet who teaches English and Women’s Studies at Nassau Community College, NY. Author of numerous essays on poetics as well as creative non-fiction, she is also the 2011

10

Walt Whitman Birthplace Association Long Island Poet of the Year. She won the Local Gems Chapbook competition for her book, Slow Ripening.

Youth Poets Aria Merchant, Sraavya Danala, Anannya Akella, Sara Garg, Rehana Sheikh, Isha Chhabra, Abhra Kundu, and Sanjana Kumar.

Local Poets Debangana Banerjee was born and raised in Santiniketan, India. She received her MFA from Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan (2005) and from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge (2010).

She was a national scholar in India.

Debangana’s works have been exhibited in the US and abroad. Her first bilingual (Bengali and English) poetry chapbook was Come Back River (Finishing Line Press, 2014). Her poetry has also been published in a number of journals in India and the US. She currently lives in San Marcos, TX. Mamata Misra has lived in Austin for over 40 years and is known for her work with the organizations Asian Family Support Services of Austin (formerly SAHELI), and Pratham USA. She is the author of a book titled Winter Blossoms

and Other Poems.

11

Shubh Bala Schiesser lives in Austin, Texas. Her poems have been published in the Borderlands, Texas Poetry Review, Big River Poetry Review, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Illay’s Honey, Dallas Online Poetry, Verbal Arts, India’s Literary Magazine, Taj Mahal Poetry Journal, Waco Anthology, Muse India, an online literary journal, The Texas Poetry Calendar, Di-Verse-City Anthology, Ardent, Poetry of Arts, Austin Poetry Society, The Enigmatist, Blue Hole, Forest Fest Anthology, Lamesa, Galaxy of Verse, Austin Chronicle, Drash Pit, Carcinogenic Poetry and so on.

Archana Vemulapalli grew up in Hyderabad listening to her venerable grandfather often quote Ghalib, Frost & Shakespeare which greatly influenced her lifelong love of literature and poetry. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Austin and blogs at www.southasianaustinmoms.com

Local Artists Kai Cole is 12 years old and this fall will be a 7th grader at the Kealing Magnet School, where he plays with the Kealing Symphony Orchestra. Kai has studied violin since he was 6 years old under Elise Winters. He has performed with many groups through the Austin Chamber Music Center, as well as being a member of the Austin All City Youth Orchestra and the All Region Middle School Orchestra. He received a scholarship to attend Luzerne Music Camp in New York this summer for 4 weeks. His other interests include traveling, reading, video games, art and Japanese language and culture.

12

Musician Darrel Mayers has performed with the chamber rock group Mundi for 15 years, has toured Spain three times, and has performed with poets Naomi Shihab Nye, Robert Bly, Coleman Barks and Spirit Thom, as well as Conspirare director Craig Hella Johnson. This year Mundi was nominated for an award by the Independent Music Association. Darrel lives in Austin, and teaches world music percussion at St. Andrew's Episcopal School.

Julie Slim is a Lebanese-American multilingual jazz vocalist who performs around Austin with many bands, including Layalina, Austin Global Orchestra, 1001 Nights orchestra, and Indimaj.

Her French jazz band, Rendez Vous, specializes in French music from the 1930’s-1960’s and includes James Anderson (Austin Piazzola Quintet) on violin, Phil Spencer on double bass, and Shirley Johnson (Yiddish Cowboys) on accordion.

SPIRIT THOM is an improvising bard who plays best with improvising musicians. With MOTHER GONG, he has supported BOB DYLAN, ROY HARPUR etc. Thom is a co-founder of Austin International Poetry Festival, with many books available via worldpoetry.org/iTunes/ Smashwords /Inktera /NOOK/Versent Books.

He is also the host of EXPRESSIONS. Vinitha Subramanian, the director of Natyalaya School of Dance has been teaching in the Central Texas area for over 30 years. She has many arangetram to her credit and has staged several dance dramas and thematic presentations such as Jungle Book - Seonee, Ganga- A River’s story, Nouka Charitram and Two faces of Shiva, just to name a few. Under her direction, Natyalaya has grown into a premier dance institution in the central Texas area.

13

Gethsemane Matthew 26: My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt.

Then, young and supple learning to breathe from the air as a calf drinks from its mother, Their many ears were innocent and tender unfurling to the wind’s secrets, Unaware of an imminent eavesdropping of a sacred covenant between God and the one to become the son of God, One night was enough to curl the sap and shrivel the eager rush of life, bearing witness to suffering is harder than suffering, this, the gnarled testimonial of the olive trees, Death released its odors The angels gathered weeping The moon grew pale The sky whitened like a shroud Shadows approached as wolves.

When he rose, still as a compass at rest the world withered in shame, the sun fearfully knocked its goblet of light, it streamed reluctantly that morning afraid of its contents, And the olive trees wept tears of blood— loyal, un-fled disciples.

Usha Akella

14

an attempt, to exclude think about a night full of poetry excluding you the whole night will pass and the moon will not recognize you think about an entire day full of poetry excluding you on that day and from that day the rain will never touch you if I am a poem excluding you then soil, puddle and cloud (all my matter!) will exclude you as I am constantly trying to exclude you words engulf themselves in embers of their final evening as I am constantly trying to exclude you, the river erodes its own line and hushes the river was so hurt, its currents opposed me I was afraid the leaves will fall early if I tell you about a poem excluding you but today I realize, you already drifted into some other poems all of them knew that the river cannot keep its promise did the river ever promise at all?

Debangana Banerjee Translated from Bengali by Vincent A. Cellucci

15

The Glass-blower He knew about glass and its history; beads of the vintage of Amenhotep; the Niniveh tablets of Assurbanipal; blowpipe, marver, pontil, each successive step Which fire took to make clay transparent.

‘Glass is not in the family,’ he said.

‘My forefathers were alchemists, sublimators of baser alloys like zinc and lead; believers in a four-cornered universe of water and air, earth and fire.

They spent a lifetime with bellows, furnaces.

They were metallurgists, but they aspired to mysticism. Alchemy for them was not some quack technique harnessed to greed of wealth.

The goal was transmuting the earthy into the celestial, sickness into health.

Now things are changed; a philosophy slips out as an age loses its teeth. Nothing holds fast.

Decay sets in with birth: we rust like iron, we splinter like glass.

Keki Daruwalla

16

my name is sicilia, you called me savior once one, or more lost, driven seeking solace of an emptied mind tear ducts swollen salt water for the journey on arrival at the centre many replied “… no thnich … no thni city” … blank gained amnesia disembarked into a future (from dream / arteries, Talonbooks, 2014) Phinder Dulai

17

A Rumor of Birds (After reading Songbird Journeys by Miyoko Chu, 2006)

In my sleep, birds stream silently overhead—flocks of them— Wave after wave of a high altitude river unbound By banks, wings riding the wind, navigating by stars in the pitch Black of night, or the water’s magnetic glaze.

Sometimes, they storm above my roof in a cloudburst Of feathers, squawks, and screams.

One watching through a telescope will see them Scatter like flakes of pepper against lunar light.

But mostly, these night-travelers will pass invisibly, afloat On a murmur. Before daybreak, they sift down To settle in the trees or fields to awaken us with their Morning songs. After dusk, they flutter up again to migrate south.

Jays, thrushes, blackbirds, finches, wrens, larks, swallows, tanagers, Warblers, orioles—you live, love, breed, and die at full tilt Claiming only a bit of earth and infinite sky.

Saleem Peeradina

18

As If (a trimetric) silent silent darkness starless barren night moonless clouds linger as if the sun has no schedule for tomorrow starless barren night wrapped in a shroud as if the Milky Way has eloped with the Moon moonless clouds linger in thick clumps as if exhausted on a roller coaster of loneliness as if the sun has no schedule for tomorrow the barren night hovers like a ghost in its dark web Shubh Bala Schiesser

19

Fireflies Heavy-draped beyond the slipform stone wall laid one over two, two over one and shimmed by thin fingers of granite, night falls moonless in a bindweed field stretching to a dark grove that flares light— sudden, incessant, nitric – electric sea-green bursts more frequently seen on an arcade screen, signals a synchronous Morse code of mating sent from lanterns rung in a rosette, innervated by neurons, souls of the dead in Japanese folkore, hotaru. Actually, it’s love: They only find each other in the dark.

Ravi Shankar

20

From Death is a Festival 1.

To begin, confine to ten perpendicular feet.

Ten or twelve. Saltatorial nature of the animal.

Into every excess they are wanting death of the orange-tree near the dancing school: divine harmony of the gong, the French horn, the salt-box. Darkness+writing+Franciscans, then twig, then sapling, then lateral shoots.

I understand the disease which you call self-righteousness. Some rocks possess an intrinsic property of malevolence, some other rocks flog the dogs out of the seven senses.

Most of the prisoners are in impaired health.

The form of these iron-stones is ornaments with sequins, girls got up like camp grannies.

Anis Shivani

21

From No Poem: A Divine Rising —11 I am a walking tree.

I stop in Silence full— the people pass me by— unseen by the naked eye.

Naked as blue sky, I cannot speak, cry

to the child who breaks my branches.

Rain trickles through me.

Wind dries me out.

In bustle of traffic, streaking lights, blur of seasons, I am planted.

Sasha Kamini Parmasad

22

My Eyes Can’t Get Enough of the Trees “My eyes can’t get enough of the trees”

--Nazim Hikmet

They wave to me from every side of the avenue, from hills, the lake, oh, how they wave their arms in soft rain and in raging sunlight, unstoppable in their delight. When Pond Path lost her trees, I mourned. Every new house that sprang there is haunted by spirits of roots and phantom birds.

I planted Rose of Sharon saplings in my yard, each in memory of a lopped maple or oak, for trees are like books, telling us stories of places, even horrors, a fire, a storm, a lynching. Climate watchers, truth tellers, and treelogers, listening to the pulse of our planet, whispering of ponds erased, paths destroyed for malls.

They whisper through it all, urged by their being, so our eyes can’t get enough of them.

Pramila Venkateswaran

23

Shehenshah - The King of Kings Unki woh baanthein dekho Sarhad paar Karne ki kaha karthe hai {Pay attention to his words He talks of crossing every border there is} Shenenshah hai duniya ke Dharthi ukhaad ke aage jaane ki Aadat rakhthe hain {He is the King of of Kings He has a habit of uprooting everything That is in his way} Unki nazar ne Dekha dilkash nazaarein beshumaar {He eyes have seen Countless wonders in this world} Par jab Dekha mukhda Tera Dalayri kaha kaam Karthi hai {But when finally his gaze Fell upon your face What good is his bravery} Unki woh aankhen dekho Ab unki nigaahain dikhthi hai {Now, look at his eyes You can see her eyes in his} Unki woh baahain dekho Teri Bequaraari main guzarthe hai {Now look at his shoulders You can see them yearn for her} Unki woh raahain dekho Galiyon main bhatakthe rehthe hain {Now look at his path He wanders around looking for her}

24

Unki Jo khwaish samjho Piya ki aah main dino raath katthe hai {Now, understand what his wishes are made of He dreams of his beloved day and night} Ab naquaab ke peeche dekho Tere liye Tadap Tadap ke marthe hai {Now look behind this mask of his He pines for you and dies a thousand deaths} Faateh-e-aazam hai to Kya hua Mohabbat main Shehenshah Bhi sar jhukaya karthe hai {And so what if he is the King of the worlds Even Kings, when in Love Bow down their heads} Archana Vemulapalli

The Act of Asking I close my eyes and quietly sit But my mind starts a conversation Lucky that you don’t respond, otherwise This conversation may never end Lost in the perennial search The occasion for celebration may never dawn Perhaps one day, you will Shake me, wake me, make me see Why an exclamation Looks like a question How the act of asking distorts The straight line into a curve.

Mamata Misra

25

IN GRATITUDE Matwaala Poetry Festival materialized in a weirdly Austin way.

There was a thought one day of a festival—inspired mysteriously—and then a festival appeared, thanks to this city whose spirit is ‘community.’ So, on behalf of the Matwaala collective I first, as an Austinite, express my gratitude to the City of Austin. To know your city has faith in you is a feeling of belonging. A very special acknowledgment is due to Ravi Akella, my husband.

This festival could not have happened without his quiet and abiding support.

As a collective, our heartfelt thanks to the following sponsors without whose fiscal contributions Matwaala Poetry Festival would remain a dream.

Sponsors (Educational & Cultural Institutions): We extend our heartfelt gratitude to: Austin Poets International & James Jacobs who as he says “puts his money where his mouth is.” His staunch fiscal support was the backbone of the festival; ACC & Lyman Grant for his belief that ACC is a “community” college and proving it with a weighty donation and hosting a reading; The Cultural Arts Division, City of Austin for its support and mementos; The Dialog Institute for its ongoing outreach and impeccable hospitality. Hosting a special reading for the poets and reception was an outstanding gesture of peace building between communities; APS for good words and support and Natyalaya School of Dance Director Vinitha Subramanian, for staunchly supporting the event with talent.

More sponsors & individual support: Harish Kotecha’s help was immeasurable extended in a spirit of giving and recognition of South Asian Arts. We owe him gratitude for all our marketing materials and a fiscal donation. Shubh Bala Schiesser for sponsoring a lunch on event day. Thanks to Pramila Venkateswaran for sponsorship of poets’ dinner, design of booklet & her strong moral support; two anonymous individuals for their sponsorship of poets’ airfare; Ravi Pothukuchy who reached for his wallet even before the request could be articulated to help fund with marketing materials, mementos, reception ware etc; the Malpani family, for offering their home and hospitality to the poets as well as a donation; Anjali Jangalapalli, Punita Chhabra, Jen Castellino and others for wine; Ramesh Danala for local reach out advertising, support and finding restaurant sponsorship; Paradise Biryani and South Asian Austin Moms and for sponsoring chai and snacks.

Such generosity from so many!

Matwaala buddies: To these friends, for spreading the word, cooking, airport shuttles, allowing Facebook posts on their sites, Facebook pages, wine donations and putting up posters around town: South Asian Austin Moms, Gavin Lance Garcia from To Do Austin, Alka Bhanot (Indie Meme), Shalini Komarla (AIN), Archana Vemulapally, Satheesh GAMA, Terry Sherrell, (Ginnys),

26

Vandana Agarwal, Ankita, Sangeetha Krishnan, Kalpana Rentala, Sanjana Malpani, Dr. Sata Sathasivan. Jen Castelino & Punita Chhabra. Julie Slim for the Facebook page; Saleem Peeradina was always ready with good words and support though afar.

Cultural Segment: We say a sincere thanks to the performers Kai Cole, young violin virtuoso. His music is a joy to the ears and Austin feels fortunate to be home to this talent; Vinitha Subramanian and dancers from Natyalaya school dance for your stunning talent; Thom the world poet and Darrell Mayers for their delightful duo performance of improvisation poetry- a true Austin poetry icon; Rama Tiru for her incisive photography and vision; Julie Slim and band- a unique signature to end the program. What a delight! Hemanth Bhagawatula, Sound engineer, our words would not have reached you the audience without him.

And… our indefatigable MCs Anannya Akella, Rehana Sheikh and the youth poets need our big hugs for livening up things and bringing that special energy only the young can bring by just being. A THANK YOU to the Matwaala poets- both guest and local. For believing in ‘us.’ Amritjit Singh for baptizing us with a name that we hope will endure in its mission and motive. To be intoxicated by Poetry and to intoxicate with Poetry. For banding together—Pramila, Saleem, Ravi, Anis, Shubh, Sasha, Keki & Phinder—what a thing we’ve pulled off! It’s a drunken feelingunity! And Poetry knows how to say it.

(Some acknowledgements are bound to be forgotten—so wide has the support been—or omitted due to things unfolding beyond the booklet printing No omission is deliberate.)

Namaskar!

Usha Akella, Festival Director Cultural Ambassador, City of Austin

& The Core group, Matwaala Collective:

Pramila Venkateswaran & Saleem Peeradina

27

The Matwaalla Collective Usha Akella, Festival Director Cultural Ambassador, City of Austin.

Contact: poetrycaravanaustin@gmail.com or 914.686.4487 Designed by Pramila Venkateswaran

28