Poetry reading Gather around the hearth at
You & I Arts Café (Mawroh)
For an evening of Poetry, Translation and Khasi Traditional Music
Poets: Kerstin Preiwuss, Maitrayee Patar, Wangphrang K Diengdoh
Translators: Rebekah A Tham and Vidya Sarma
Facilitated by: Jayashree Joshi and Mary Therese Kurkalang
Music by: RIKUNE - Khasi Traditional Musicians
Hosted by: You & I Arts Café and Pine Air
Entry:
The programme is open and everyone is welcome, first-come-first-seated.
The POETS
Kerstin Preiwuss,
Leipzig, Germany
Poet and prose-writer
She describes her language as an animal in her mouth from which the mutinous word breaks out.
Kerstin was born in Lübz in 1980 and lives now in Leipzig as a freelance author. She translates lyrics, hosts workshops in writing and is guest lecturer at universities. After her studies in German philology, philosophy and Psychology in Leipzig and Aix-en-Provence, she did her PhD on Polish city names. She is a graduate of the German Institute of Literature Leipzig. In 2006 she debuted with a volume of poems “Nachricht von neuen Sternen”, followed by, “Rede” (2012), “Gespür für Licht” (2016), and the novels “Restwärme” (2014) and “Nach Onkalo” (2017), which was nominated for the German Book Prize. From 2010 to 2012 she was co-editor of ‘Edit’ a literary magazine. She received multiple awards for her work, most recently the Meran and the Eichendorff literary prize for her lyrics. Kerstin Preiwuss is a member of PEN.
Maitrayee Patar
Tezpur, India
Poet, Singer, Songwriter
Poetry, she says, is her meditation.
A postgraduate in Sociology from the Delhi School of Economics and an M.Phil in Women’s Studies from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She belongs to the indigenous Tiwa tribe but writes and publishes in Assamese. Although nature is a prominent element in almost all of Maitrayee’s poems, her poetry has experienced a complex impact of memories- the tranquil of her ancestral village, the transition of Guwahati, the city of her childhood and adolescence, and the experiences of multiple metro cities in adulthood have impacted her poetry. Her poems have been translated into languages including Italian, Nepali, Hindi, Tiwa and Malayalam. She is also a professional vocalist with a few critically acclaimed songs to her name and is co-founder, composer and lyricist at Baartalaap, a musical record company in Mumbai.
Wanphrang K Diengdoh
Shillong, India
Poet, Film-maker, Musician
Wanphrang believes that every language carries deep within itself a history and testimony of a community that speak it.
He is an independent film maker and is the founder of reddur, a production space for films and music. His films, music videos and installation works reflect his interest in the culture and politics of the space he comes from. In 2015, he directed Between the Forest and the Song, a film that explores the song naming tradition in Kongthong Village and the implications of modernity in indigenous spaces. His film on the participation of tribal labour in the First World War released in 2017. Wanphrang also co-wrote and edited ‘My Name is Eeooow’ which won the prestigious Intangible Culture prize at the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Ethnographic Film Festival in 2017. He is currently filming his first feature length film 'Lorni- the Flaneur'.
Wanphrang has directed several music documentaries. He is one third of the politico-punk band Tarik and engineers recordings and produces music for other musical acts.
The TRANSLATORS:
Rebekah A Tham
Khasi -German
Rebekah Tham is the Assistant Professor of Germanic Studies at EFLU (The English and Foreign Language University), Shillong Campus. She completed her MA (German- Translation & Interpretation) and M.Phil (Linguistics), at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Tham’s German training includes at the International Seminar Training for Teachers of German in Salzburg and Graz, Austria (BM:BWK), at Goethe-Institut Berlin, and she also completed the Teacher-Trainer course for South Asian Region at Goethe Institut - New Delhi & Munich. Her interests and professional work includes Translation, Applied Linguistics, Language Teaching and Intercultural Communication.
Vidya Sarma
Assamese -German
Vidya Sarma is a teacher, writer and translator.
She teaches German language at the Central School in Narengi, Assam. In 2017 she won a scholarship and trip to Germany. She writes for Marathi press regularly. Her Assamese to Marathi translation of Rita Choudhury’s ‘Makam’ won her the Goa Hindu Association’s Award in the year 2013.She is currently working on a translation of poems and songs ‘Sudhakantha’ by Bhupen Hazarika.
The PHOTOGRAPHER
Elyon Blah
Elyon Blah has been working primarily as a photographer with a particular focus on travel and landscape photography since 2014. He also dabbles in cinematography and writing. He says he feels duty-bound to record, document and preserve. Through his works he hopes to evoke new understandings and a rediscovery of old traditions.