Poetry is the quieter, less-loved yet urgent voice of literature: Ashok Vajpeyi

These are the times when prose, fiction, non-fiction and news reports are dominating the scene. Poetry is the quieter, less-loved and silent, yet urgent voice that goes unheard in the cacophony. We thought it would be a good idea to highlight this voice. One must also mention that poetry contains incredible pluralism in terms of voices, vision, styles, structures, languages, idioms and more.

The most important reason for the biennale is that SH Raza’s second love, after painting, was poetry.

How have you conceptualised the biennale?

Vak has been conceptualised as a triptych. Between tomorrow and April 9, the first edition of the biennale will focus on Indian Poetry, the second, in 2019, will be on Asian Poetry and the third, in 2021, which is also the birth centenary year of Raza, would be devoted to World Poetry.

What was the selection criteria for the poets featured in Vak?

Vak brings together 45 poets from 15 languages. We felt we have covered most major languages. Space availability and other factors did not allow us to extend the list. We wanted to give each poet at least 15 minutes. We wish we could have got more voices from the Northeast — we have Assam and Manipur — and were trying to bring a Mizo poet but it did not work out.

There is an evident political line in the topics of the three panel discussions.

Politics is germane to the poetic work of our times, the world over as well as in India. As all kinds of efforts are being made to curb freedom of expression, it is for poetry to embody the ideas of freedom. One panel discussion is titled “Poetry and Freedom” and includes K Satchidanandan, who writes in Malayalam and English, Krishna Kumar, former director of NCERT, social scientist Ananya Vajpeyi and Apoorvanand, who teaches in Delhi University.