By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 14 Dec: The moon became the muse for poets even in broad daylight as the poetry group, ‘Moonweavers – Chaand kay Julahey’, put together a poetry performance in Doon.
The Moonweavers Poetry Sonata was held on 11 December at Musee Art Café. The poets read their verse in a garden setting outdoors, while an art exhibition took place indoors simultaneously. The idea was to take poetry outside the confines of a formal setup and explore the dynamics of interconnectedness between poetry and space, as well as poetry and other art forms.
Dr Puneet Tyagi, a well known pulmonologist of Dehradun and Medical Director, the Graphic Era Institute of Medical Sciences, presided over the reading as the Poetry Chair. Dr Tyagi, an accomplished poet in Hindi, read out some of his poems as well.
Other poets who read at the gathering included Dr Shachi Negi, Dr Kaushik Ghosh, Sharmishtha, Bitopi Dutta, Viky Arya, Noopur Jha, Jyoti Pandey, Lakshmi, and Moonweavers’ founder Rati Agnihotri.
‘Moonweavers – Chaand kay Julahey’ was founded in November 2010 in Delhi by Rati Agnihotri. It started with poetry open mics and then moved on to theme-based poetry performances, poetry readings in regional languages including Garhwali and Kumaoni, and events giving space to distinct voices including translators.
Moonweavers did an experimental music and poetry collaboration way back in 2012, at which the musicians gave a background score to poems. They also conducted a Poetry and Theatre Workshop in Delhi in 2019, with the participants given exercises that combined elements of acting, performance and poetry writing.
The group believes that poetry transcends the boundaries of the written word. As Rati puts it, “We love reading beautiful books of poetry and writing them. But, at the same time, we also like exploring the interconnectedness of poetry with other art forms like music, theatre, paintings, sculpture, etc.”
Moonweavers is now at an exciting crossroads where it wants to dabble into many new areas. Poetry walks, visual arts and poetry collaborations, and poetry merchandise, are a few ideas the group will be working with over the next few months.
