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Monday, Feb 25, 2008
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Saarc Poetry festival of young poets concludes

Correspondent

Some 60 poets participate in the event

Two of the sessions were held in Puri and Konark
Unpleasant incidents occurred during valedictory session

CUTTACK: The Three-day SAARC Poetry Festival of Young Poets concluded here on Sunday with valedictory session held at Ravenshaw University. The varsity Vice-Chancellor Debdas Chhotray inaugurated the session while eminent Oriya poet Jayant Mohapatra joined the function as guest of honour.

Inaugurating the session, Chhotray, a former IAS officer and also a poet of repute observed that such festivals would go a long way in establishing stronger cultural links between the participating countries. He said more such cultural festivals should be arranged in other fields so as to create a sensitive and compassionate atmosphere of understanding each other’s problems and finding solutions to them.

Senior poet Mohapatra said poets have greater responsibility towards life. “By this we mean that a poet is first of all responsible to his conscience, otherwise, he cannot be called as a poet.”

He said poets often predict the future of the society in their poems; they talk of the problems ahead and at times warn about the impending troubles. “Through their writings, the poets protest against the violence in the society and therefore, their writings should not be ignored”, Mohapatra said.

First-of-its-kind

At least 60 poets, 20 from other countries and remaining from across the country participated in the three-day long festival, which was inaugurated in Bhubaneswar on Friday. Two other sessions were also held in Puri and Konark. Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature (Foswal), New Delhi and the local NGO Bharat Integrated Social Welfare Agency (BISWA) organized the festival, the first of its kind for SAARC nations.

Poets from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Nepal, Maldives, Pakistan, Bhutan and India participated in this festival.

Among the Indians, poems in Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati, Tamil, Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Manipuri, Punjabi, Marathi, Urdu and Oriya were recited in all the sessions of the festival.

The valedictory session however, witnessed some unpleasant moments this morning when some Indian poets expressed their unhappiness over the poor arrangements made by the local organizer with regard to food, boarding and transportation.

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