Social organization Durgapur Adda Young Association (DAYA) organized 1st Poetry Festival remembering great Bengali poet Birendra Chattopadhyay and Nobel award winning poet, Pablo Neruda. The programme was held on 4th September 2021 at Bidhan Bhavan in the steel city of Durgapur.
Twenty-five poets from Durgapur were invited to recite their self-written poems on the theme “Oppressed People”. Each of them was honoured by the organization with a memento.
The main attraction of the program was the discussion on the poetry of poet Birendra Chattopadhyay and poet Pablo Neruda. Poet, singer and composer Bipul Chakraborty portrayed Poet Birendra Chattopadhyay; here it needs to be mentioned that Bipul Chakraborty was very close to Birendra Chattopadhyay and even today he has very good relation with the family of the eminent Bengali poet. Bipul Chakraborty and his wife Anushree Chakraborty performed two poems by poet Birendra Chattopadhyay as songs.
On the other hand, Dr. Shankhamala Roy, a multi-talented professor of Calcutta South City College discussed the various aspects of the poetry of poet Pablo Neruda. Dr. Shankhamala then presented the Bengali translation of two of Neruda’s poems, being translated by her, in the form of songs; the melodic song touched the hearts of the audience.
Students of ‘Sinchon’ initiative of DAYA performed a recitation collage of poems. Members of DAYA presented a collage poems from Neruda’s translated poems and Birendra Chattapadhyay’s poems.
After that, the Bengali translation of two poems by the poet Pablo Neruda was recited by Shri Gautam Chakraborty, a prominent poem reciting artist of Durgapur, which took the whole program to a new high.
Students of the ‘Sinchon’ project of Durgapur Adda Young Association, took everyone by surprise by their self written poem on the subject of the evening, “The oppressed People”; Kakoli Dasgupta, the host of the program, recited these 6 poems.
Organized in the presence of more than one and a half hundred people, this poetry festival we hope will open new enlightened path, giving slogans in the voices of oppressed people, which will illuminate the darkness of oppression, injustice and inequality with a flash of light.