fwd: Open Baithak at The Attic, Thursday August 23rd

"Open Baithak" Performance in Poetry Series

Location: The Attic, 36 Regal Buildings, New Delhi

Time: 6.30-9 pm, Aug 23, 2007 Thursday


After a longish summer break, the Baithak Opens again. Come with the 
poems you've scribbled in these three hot months and show us what you wrote!

For the open reading, sign up starts at 6.30pm. Readings start at 7pm. 
Each poet gets 5 mins on the mike and is expected to bring in new work 
every time -- and also to delight the audience by doing risky and 
innovative things with it. You can read in any language.

Contact Monica Mody for more info, or if you have tech needs/questions: 
openbaithak@xxxxxxxxx


Also featuring

Taru Dalmia aka Delhi Sultanate

Taru started rapping at the age of 10 in Europe, engaging in "freestyle 
battles" on street corners and later in Hip Hop clubs. (A freestyle 
battle consists of two MCs competing against each other using lyrical 
assaults, and hence deconstructing each other's persona with improvised 
rhymes.) At around 15, he began operating a reggae sound system and was 
heavily influenced by Jamaican artists belonging to the often militantly 
political Bobo Ashanti branch of Rastafarianism.

Today he raps in plain English and in the more rhythmic and expressive 
reggae style patois, while trying to adapt the reggae and hip hop format 
to the Indian context.

About Open Baithak:

A new monthly poetry in performance series in Delhi, Open Baithak offers 
a space for poets to think about new and innovative ways of presenting 
poetry to audiences, and a test platform for emerging poet performers. 
It makes a regular meeting place for poets from different linguistic, 
written and oral traditions. It is also a meeting place for listeners 
and readers of poetry. It hopes to be a place and a space where together 
we can make poetry better than the movies.

History:

Earlier this year, the British Council Delhi had organized a Spoken Word 
Series featuring performances and workshops by and Indian poets such as 
Anjum Hasan, Jeet Thayil, John Hegley, Lemn Sissay, Patience Agbabi and 
Vivek Narayanan. This culminated in an open mic evening at Sarai, where 
those of us present felt the necessity for more such spaces, which give 
an opportunity to poet performers to explore how performance and poetry 
can be brought together, spaces where words can come alive on the stage 
through ways and means ranging from music to rhythm to dance and beyond. 
The first Open Baithak was held at The Attic on May 18, 2007.



Our Sponsor:

We are immensely grateful to the British Council Delhi for giving us the 
financial support to get the series up and running.