South Asian poets share creative talent

Poets at Sapne Meet
Poets at Sapne Meet

Lexington: A South Asian Poets’ group of New England (SAPNE) presented ‘Garland of Poetry-A Festival of Creative Compositions’ on August 13 at the Lexington Community Center, Lexington, MA to encourage the voices of South Asia in New England area. The organizers invited original poems in all languages and put them together into a beautiful garland.

The seed of SAPNE sprouted in 1997 when an India Poetry Reading event was organized at Harvard University by the Professor & Chair Leonard van de Kuijp, Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of India’s independence. With its continuous efforts SAPNE as an organization runs its meetings by volunteers.

Bijoy Misra, an organizer, mentioned in his introductory remarks that they were achieving the goal of SAPNE. He was glad to see its growth over the years into a big tree with its matured and new, talented and creative poets, composers of Ghazals, devotional and non-devotional songs and Shayari. South Asians have maintained a commercial and intellectual connection with New England since the first immigrants who arrived in 1789.

More than two hundred thousand South Asians have made New England their home and are participating as professionals in academy, industry and business. Prof. Jaspal Singh, the evergreen conductor of poetry recitation sessions, welcomed and thanked all the poets, distinguished guests and audience for their time and participation. Several well-known poets of New England presented their beautiful poems and expressed their natural human emotion in different languages. SAPNE said it was grateful to Lexington Community Center for having lent their space for the meeting.

Neena Wahi, one of the participants expressed, “Thanks to SAPNE for hosting such meetings and bringing all poets of this area together on one platform and providing them with a rare opportunity to share and learn and enrich their creativity”

The organizers of the event were Sanjeev Tripathi, Sunayana Kachroo, Chandu Shah and Bijoy Mira.

Geetha Patil