Day 8: Stand in Solidarity or Sit in Silence! Poetry Reading

Images  by: Selvaraj 

On the 8th day of the 2022 Prajnya 16 Days Campaign Against Gender Violence, we partnered with Mockingbirds and InKo Centre and organised a poetry reading. This year, we had Srilata K, Kutti Revathi, Aaliyah Banu, Manushi Bharathi and Amrin Khalil reading their poetry.

The poetry reading covered a wide range of themes like body politics, domestic violence, religious identities and rights of transgender persons, to name a few. A few of the poets were also of the firm view that their work does fundamentally stay rooted in the idea that "personal is political".

“You see, Women must fight to be alive

The world isn't a nice place

For a woman, even the air she breathes is luxury

Something that is given to her

Something she will be held accountable for” 

- excerpt from Aaliyah's work, "The Angry Poem"

Kutti Revathi, in her conversation with Saradha U, for the TNM piece noted that, the performers provided the audience with a holistic perspective on the voices of women, with each poetry providing a different perspective, and acknowledging that the efforts made by the poets to put their voices out there is not easy (Saradha, 2022, as cited in The News Minute, 2022)

You may read the elaborate coverage of our event by Saradha U for The News Minute here.

Day 5: Women Defenders of Human Rights Day

Friday, November 29: Day 5 of the Campaign falls on Women Defenders of Human Rights Day. Prajnya screened 2 films at the Women's Christian College --  Tu Zinda Hai by Shabnam Virmani and Invoking Justice by Deepa Dhanraj, who was part of the panel discussion held after the screening. Poet Kutti Revathi and dancer Anita Ratnam were also part of the panel.

Anita Ratnam, Deepa Dhanraj and Kutty Revathi speak to students at Women's Christian College

Filmmaker Deepa Dhanraj spoke about the making of Invoking Justice, a film about the first women's Jamaat in India. An alumnus of WCC, Deepa took questions from the students on the subject of her documentary. "The women's Jamaat is successful because they interpret the Sharia in a flexible way. Some of them have a good hold on Criminal Law and they use whatever is best for a particular instance. So when there were talks of starting a women's Sharia court, these women were very concerned. They want the flexibility of a women's jamaat not rigidity of a formal court  because the court works on precedents -- and the precedents are set by already existing sharia courts, which may or may not be helpful to women," she said.

Poet Kutti Revathi spoke to the students about her work, the controversy surrounding it, and about understanding what each individual wants from their life. "My work is my passion and I am not ready to share the time I spend on my work with someone else. I'm a passionate lover, but that doesn't mean I need someone else to complete me," she said. The poet also spoke about the differing perspectives of men and women. "I wish I could find a woman to translate my poems from Tamil to English.. Men don't have the same experiences as women do, and therefore my message is not always conveyed properly."

The panel discussion revolved around gender, beauty and conflict in different art forms. Dancer Anita Ratnam explained, "Art has been used by different cultures that have been affected by violence in different ways. In post-war Germany, their dance forms have evolved into colourful celebrations of all things beautiful. But Japan on the other hand has gone to the other extreme; many of their contemporary performances are minimalistic, with sometimes no props, costumes or jewellery. This is their expression of the agony and destruction caused by war."

Reflections on Not Silence, but Verse

Belatedly, posting reflections by Uma Vangal on Not Silence, But Verse: a reading of poetry, held last Saturday at Full Circle.

The day? Saturday 27^th, November. the time: 630 pm The venue? Full Circle book shop.The event? Not silence, but verse, a poetry reading by four women poets. The occasion? Prajnya’s 16 day campaign against gender violence.

Full circle was full and that’s just the beginning. As the evening progressed, the full house was spell bound as they heard Kutti Revathi, Sharanya Manivannan, Salma and Srilata, their voices rising and falling with the emotions that echoed some universal experiences of women.

Vazhvin soonyangal and nammai piditha pisugal sharply brought out the burdens women carry around them in physical and intellectual terms and the fact that women are pilloried for their choices and actions even in their use of words. The ‘politics of the word’ demonstrated this with clarity as Kutti Revathi brought life to the words.

Sharnaya Manivannan, poet and columnist recited her sensuous and visually rich poems on abusive relationships, prejudices, the voids and women's deepest darkest desires and the pride of female lineage. The recurring motifs of fire and astronomical symbolism abound in her writing and reading.

“Men need onlt and paper to pen their poems; we women require courage, determination and fortitude to express ourselves”. When Salma began her recital with these words, the audience would have understood the enormous task these women have taken upon themselves. Salma went on to read thought-provoking poems on female identity, communal identity, menopause, inadequacy of one’s body as one’s identity and the courage displayed by women in extreme situations especially “The contract” that showed woman need to have some semblance of control and dominion over the men and remain “a placid lake” amidst all the turmoil, abuse and negativity they faces.

Srilata, poet, winner of several literary prizes and fellowships and professor at the humanities department of IIT, Madras began her reading with “not reaching out” on the casual encounters that never fructify in our lives, and on war victims evoking the horror faced by women in war and conflicts zones and the free flow of ideas one experiences. Finally, a bio note on the woman from Madras that resonated with references to a typical Madras upbringing and its contentment against all odds.

The conversation that followed the verse centred on the anger, anguish, suffering, courage, challenges and universality of themes in women’s literary writing and the need to also look into ways of translating the collective and personal experiences of women from the regional to the global language. Many comments, questions and suggestions were made along with the observation that opposition to feminist writing stemmed from both within and without.
As for those who oppose feminist writing and counter it with abuse and vehement criticism, Anita Ratnam from the audience quoted from Paulo Coelho

“Those who are jealous are confused admirers who cannot understand why we are popular”

2009 Campaign PR (28/11):Not silence, but verse: Poetry reading

As part of its 16 Days against Gender Violence Campaign, Prajnya, a Chennai-based centre for research, networking and public education, held a poetry reading titled, “ Not Silence but Verse” at a bookstore Full Circle, here on Saturday.

Poets Susan Hawthorn, Sivakami and “Kutti” Revathi read out some of their work to a spell bound audience. While feminism was the recurring theme in each of the three poets’ works, it was the distinctive approach that each had that made the reading an engrossing one.

Moderating the reading, Professor K.Srilatha from IIT-Madras said, “Feminist poetry is like a double edged sword. Pointing outwards, the sword speaks out at the propogators of violence and those who cause hurt to women, however, pointing inwards, it is like a surgical knife- that heals and soothes.”

Susan Hawthord, a feminist activist and poet from Australia spoke about her interest in the ways in which women were demonised, much of her work revolves around this sphere. Her poem about women prisoners, “In the prisons” struck a chord with the audience. “Women find themselves criminalized for who they are and not always for what they have done,” she said.

Sivagami who is also secretary of the Chennai Poets Circle won the hearts of the audience with her passionate recitation of some of her poems like “An Unaccustomed Custom” and “The Doom of Silence”. Much of her poetry were from scenes she had witnessed in real life, or things she had read about. “ If I don’t read anything, I tend to not find anything to write about!” she confessed.

Tamil Poet ‘Kutti’ Revathi’s poems were a revelation. Mostly revolving around the politics of the female body, her poems have always been subjected to controversy and criticism. “A woman’s body takes the shape of the structure that men allot,” she opined quoting examples from advertising and films.

Earlier, a 2-hour long creative writing workshop held for college students was facilitated by K. Srilatha. It aimed at triggering thought processes and ideas for fiction and poetry writing.

Day Four: An Evening of Verse

Full Circle outdid themselves in co-hosting "Not Silence, but Verse," a poetry reading that brought together Susan Hawthorne, Sivakami Velliangiri and Kutti Revathi.

Different styles, different identities, different idioms but through all these, ran the common thread of experiencing life as a woman in patriarchal settings, and as Revathi put it, searching for a language and spaces that are not already defined and circumscribed by men.

Our special thanks to Srilata K., who read at last year's campaign and has in the last year become one of our favourite people and really, even if she doesn't quite realise it, part of the Prajnya team! She conceptualised the reading, identified and invited the poets, planned and scripted the programme, so that it was both a stand-alone for the public and a natural sequel to the Creative Writing Workshop she ran all afternoon before the reading. Srilata, you're a star!