A big thank you to Nandini Varma and Shantanu Anand, the Co-Founders of Airplane Poetry Movement.
NYPS was a two-day festival of spoken word poetry, featuring performances by acclaimed actor and poet Kalki Koechlin, world-renowned poet Sarah Kay, ace comedian Biswa Kalyan Rath, and India’s best slam poets! The NYPS Grand Slam was the finale of National Youth Poetry Slam (NYPS), where the best 25 college slam teams in India had been selected through a 3-month audition process, and they competed against one another at the NYPS Grand Slam.
Editorial –
In December 2013, on an absolute chilly winter evening in Pune, we watch a video like no other. A tall, black extraordinarily powerful woman who goes by the name of Patricia Smith, stands in front of an audience at a show called Def Poetry Jam, regularly aired a few years ago on HBO. She begins, “They call me skinhead and I got my own beauty,” and performs this poem, written as a persona, from the point of view of a skinhead.
She performs, “I like to say, listen to this, I like to say/Hey nigger, Abe Lincoln’s been dead a long time,” We’re freezing in our chairs, watching this poem for the first time. The feeling is of an aftermath, an image of the streets, all over the world, crying their eyes out, as Patricia performs.
What has The Bombay Review been doing this January?
This January has been an eventful month for The Bombay Review. Kaartikeya, our Editor-in-Chief has come down to India to attend several literature festivals across the country,. visit different universities and institutions for guest lectures and college events, some of which were done with Huda Merchant as well, in Mumbai and Pune. We started off with taking up interactive sessions and lectures on different topics ranging from Youth Initiatives, Using Social Media for Professional and Personal Projects to talking about the Current Literary Landscape in India, How to get Published, and how we as artists and writers can create work that matters today. Additionally, Kaartikeya has also given two TEDx talks this January.
This was our whole schedule this month! And boy, are we overwhelmed.
5th – Lecture at Symbiosis School of Liberal Arts, Pune
7th – TEDx Youth at DPS, Bangalore
8th – TEDx Mahindra Ecole Hyderabad
10th – Lecture at St. Xaviers, Mumbai
11th – Lecture at KC College, Mumbai
12th – Lecture at RUIA College, Mumbai
17th – Panel at Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival, Kolkata
18th – Interactive Session at Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival, Kolkata
20th – Lecture at GLA University, Mathura
22nd – Session at Zee Jaipur Literary Festival, Jaipur
23rd – Lecture at Lady Sri Ram College, New Delhi
24th – Lecture at Ashoka University, Sonepat
25th – Lecture at Tata Institute of Social Sciences
27th – Panel at Hyderabad Literary Festival, Hyderabad
29th – Panel at Siyahi Literary Festival, Mumbai
Here are some pictures!
As always, we love your feedback. Do write to us!
Happy Reading!
Best,
The Bombay Review Team
