Delhi – Open Baithak returns – Oct 13

presents

BRUCE BERGER

Monday October 13, 6.30 pm
Vasant Vihar, New Delhi
(please email us for complete address and directions)

Bruce Berger is best known for his poety and essays exploring the intersections of nature and culture. His poems have appeared in “Poetry”, “Barron’s”, “Orion” and various literary reviews, and have been collected in “Facing the Music”. He won the 2005 Colorado Authors’ League Award for Poetry and was a featured poet in “Light”.

Berger grew up in suburban Chicago and graduated from Yale University with a B. A. in English. During graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, wondering what Crater Lake looked like in the snow, he chucked his books down the library chute and left academia. He played piano professionally for three years in Spain, and more recently has played benefit classical recitals in Mexico.

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We begin the evening with an OPEN READING. Poets and writers who are interested in performing can sign up 6 pm onwards. Each performer gets 5 mins; 9 slots only. Be there!

CO-SPONSORED by the American Center, New Delhi
CONTACT openbaithak@gmail.com

Open Baithak @ Khoj Live 08

Khoj

in association with

Open Baithak

presents

Open Space **Poetry in performance special

Friday, March 28, 2008, 12.30-3.30 pm
Alliance Francaise, Delhi

FEATURING *VIVEK NARAYANAN + SOPHEA LERNER*

Who will present a suite of site-specific, pre-composed and improvised poems, sound objects and audience interactions. They would like to explore and unveil disconnections and echoes around time, place, language and voice, using their toolkit of poetry, performance and sound art practices.

THE LINEUP ALSO FEATURES

Salil Chaturvedi
Michael Creighton
Rizwan Mirza
Monica Mody
Anne Philpott
Annie Zaidi

Followed by a limited Open Mic (5 min on the stage)
Bring in fresh work!! To sign up to read/perform, email openbaithak@gmail.com or show up early at the Baithak.

Vivek Narayanan says, “Over the years I have moved away from thinking about performance as merely a way to make poems more entertaining and accessible, to thinking about the radical contextual possibilities of performance, and collaboration. I am interested specifically in the active performance of ‘difficult’ poems.”

This time, explore the radical in your performance.

***
Open Baithak is a contemporary gathering of poets in Delhi which offers a space for new and innovative ways of presenting poetry to audiences. Poets come from different linguistic, written and oral traditions. Visit openbaithak.wordpress.com.

KHOJLIVE 08 is a dynamic 6 day programme of events presented by Khoj, which will bring together exciting, diverse Indian and International performance artists in an attempt to showcase the different currents, positions and possibilities of contemporary performance artists. From March 25th-30th 2008. See khojworkshop.org/book/khoj_live_08.

Open Space @ THE HUB
The Alliance Française, Delhi will serve as the hub of the festival with a lunch each afternoon and an open forum or OPEN SPACE where artists/musicians/actors/poets are invited to come up on the stage and perform/interact/act.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008 featuring Delphine Bourdier followed by Krishna Pillai @12.30 pm
Thursday, March 27, 2008 featuring Suvadeep Das @12.30 pm

Double Feature: Carolyn Forche & Joy Harjo/Feb 8/Delhi

(Postponed from Feb 7: our poets stranded in Shantinketan because of the Bengal Bandh)

Open Baithak presents a reading by two of the most exciting contemporary American poets:

Carolyn Forche and Joy Harjo

Feb 8, 2008, Friday @ 7 pm
Amphitheatre, Gate # 2, India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi 110003

Co-sponsors: The American Center & India Habitat Centre

CAROLYN FORCHE is the author of “Blue Hour”; “The Angel of History”, which received the Los Angeles Times Book Award; “The Country Between Us”, which received the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and was the Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets; and “Gathering the Tribes”, which was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. She has edited an anthology on poetry of witness and has translated many poets. Over the years Forche’s quest to understand the individual’s struggle with social upheaval and political turmoil has taken her from El Salvador to the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, and South Africa. Her trip is being funded by the NEA.

JOY HARJO’s books of poetry include “The Woman Who Fell From the Sky”, which received the Oklahoma Book Arts Award; “In Mad Love and War”, which received an American Book Award and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, and others. She also performs her poetry and plays saxophone with her band, Joy Harjo and the Arrow Dynamics Band. Her many honors include The American Indian Distinguished Achievement in the Arts Award, the Josephine Miles Poetry Award, the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, and fellowships from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Witter BynnerFoundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She lives in Hawaii. Her trip is being funded by the NEA.

Open Baithak featuring Bob Holman

Open Baithak

presents

Bob Holman

Outstanding poet and poetry activist, who was recently dubbed a member of the “Poetry Pantheon” by the New York Times Magazine. Holman has been a central figure in the slam, spoken word and performance poetry movements in the US and in the movement to bring poetry back into people’s daily lives. He was instrumental in the reopening of the legendary Nuyorican Poets Cafe and was the original slammaster there. He later founded the Bowery Poetry Club in New York, which has set a standard for making poetry accessible, and for bringing together established and emerging artists from various genres together. Holman founded a record label, produced pieces for PBS, and has written several books, most recently A Couple of Ways of Doing Something, a collaboration with Chuck Close (Aperture). He is visiting Professor of Writing at Columbia University and NYU.

Jan 27, 2008, Sunday @ 6 pm
The Attic, 36 Regal Buildings, New Delhi

***Besides Holman throwing a few surprises our way, the fourth Baithak will feature its usual Open Reading where poets perform their poetry and really give you something to listen to.***

Please contact Monica Mody at openbaithak@gmail.com with questions.