Poetry Darbaar

In episode #3, the poet in the darbaar is Gurpreet Saini - reading his poems “Mohtaaj / The Name”, “The Aim”, “The Lesson”, “Suraj”, and “Shaam”. In between the poems, host Lakshya Datta talks to Gurpreet about his two lives: Gurpreet the lyricist, and Mohtaaj the poet.

It was in DAV College and then Manchtantra, that he met Rochak Kohli, Ayushmann Khurana and Gautam Govind Sharma and, from making music for street plays and stage plays in Chandigarh, he is now in Mumbai and has given us songs like: "Saadi Gali Aja" (Nautanki Saala), "Mitti di Khushboo" (Ayushmaan Khurrana’s and Rochak Kohli’s single), "Yahin Hun Main" (Ayushmaan Khurrana’s and Rochak Kohli’s single), “Maa" (Mika Singh’s and Rochak Kohli’s single), "Atrangi yaari" (Wazir), "Ek ladki ko dekh to aisa laga" (full album), "Bheege mann" (Khaandani Shafakhana), "Jako rakhe Saayiyan" (Batla House), "Tu mileya" ( Darshan Raval’s single), and most recently "Dil na jaaneya" (Good Newwz).

You can listen to his songs on JioSaavn, and follow his poetry on Instagram @mohtaaj_

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In episode #2, the poet in the darbaar is Sampurna Chattarji - reading her poems "Dogs, Mobs, and Rock Concerts", "Mahim to Goregaon", and "Fear Not". In between the poems, host Lakshya Datta chats with Sampurna about her writing process and how Bombay/Mumbai became her muse.

Sampurna Chattarji was born in in Dessie, Ethiopia and lives in Thane, Maharashtra. Her eighteen books include a short-story collection about Bombay/Mumbai, Dirty Love (Penguin, 2013); a translation of Joy Goswami’s Selected Poems (Harper Perennial, 2014, 2018); and nine poetry titles, the most recent being Over and Under Ground in Mumbai & Paris (Context, Westland Publications, 2018) written in collaboration with Karthika Naïr; Elsewhere Where Else / Lle Arall Ble Arall (Poetrywala, 2018) and The Bhyabachyaka (Scholastic, 2019), both co-authored with Eurig Salisbury. She is currently Poetry Editor of The Indian Quarterly.

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In the premiere episode, the poet in the darbaar is Akhil Katyal - reading his poems "He was as arrogant as a Chattarpur farmhouse" (English) and "Agar tum koi metro station hoti" (Hindi). The poems bookend Akhil's conversation with Poetry Darbaar host Lakshya Datta about where the words come from.

A writer based in Delhi, Akhil's second book of poems 'How Many Countries Does the Indus Cross' won the Editor's Choice Award by The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective. He translated Ravish Kumar's 'Ishq Mein Shahar Hona' as 'A City Happens in Love' for Speaking Tiger. He teaches Creative Writing at Ambedkar University Delhi.

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A poem is a song and a story, all at once. A poem is a thought and a feeling, all at once. A poem is a mystery and a discovery, all at once. A poem is new and old, all at once.

Host Lakshya Datta invites you listen to Launchora's brand new podcast "Poetry Darbaar" - an audio-series where you’ll hear the poems, the shayaris, the kavitas, and the poets of India. We’re going to travel across India and traverse through multiple Indian languages - including English, Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, Punjabi, Bengali, and many more. Through live readings and conversations with poets, this show will attempt to explore answers to one simple question: where do the words come from?

The first episode of Poetry Darbaar will come out on December 9, 2019 and it will feature Delhi-based poet Akhil Katyal. New episodes will be released every fortnight (or biweekly).

We hope you’ll join us on this new adventure. Welcome to the Poetry Darbaar.

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A special episode of Poetry Darbaar - a proper, full, and fluid conversation between two poets - Sampurna Chattarji and Karuna Ezara Parikh.

The context and structure of this conversation is Sampurna’s new book “Space Guliver”. In this book, Sampurna chronicles not only the journey of its alien protagonist, but also how one wor(l)d changes into another .... a fantastically engineered sequence, here is poetry that is not afraid to be whimsical and astute at the same time so that in the end, like Space Gulliver, the readers too will be “no longer terrified of vastness.”

Sampurna Chattarji is a writer, teacher, editor, translator who occasionally appears on the ether as ShampooChats. Space Gulliver, is the second-most recent of her 20 books.

Karuna Ezara Parikh is a poet and writer, former television anchor and model known widely for her activism. She has written for Vogue, Tehelka, The Wire, and Lonely Planet amongst others. Her novel, The Heart Asks Pleasure First, was published by Pan Macmillan India in 2020. Her first book of poetry - Where Stories Gather - is out now with Harper Collins. She lives in Kolkata where she co-founded the sustainable company The Burlap People.

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