Be Ignited or Be Gone: A Poetry Session with Shobhana Kumar

This is an online poetry session with poet and translator Shobhana Kumar.
Every third Saturday of the month, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Join us on Google Meet: https://meet.google.com/tnt-fnkp-uhp

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Exploring States of Being with Poetry

The world is crumbling around us in more ways than before. For those of us who seek to find meaning from art and poetry, every day begins with a bleakness we have never known. And yet, the wise tell us that it has always been this way. How then do we find hope?
In this session, we explore the idea of Huzun, rooted in the Arabic idea of a deep, collective spiritual loss. The loss is important to look at because this kind of loss also inspires hope. It is a deep yearning, a spiritual anguish that results in a spirit that soars.
We will look at mysticism in poetry from the West and the East. We will look at verses that are sublime and starkly simple in their rendering. And from these readings, may we find pockets of hope!

What to bring: An open mind, some blank sheets of paper, a pen/cil

The Host: Shobhana Kumar is a poet, translator and chronicler of regional histories. She also writes haibun, a haikai form of prose and haiku, and is the recipient of the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize and The Touchstone Distinguished Books Award (HM), for her book, A Sky Full of Bucket Lists. She is working on a translation of Subramania Bharathi in collaboration with K. Srilata, and the Thiruvasakam by the ninth century mystic Manickavassagar, in collaboration with Priya Sarukkai Chabria.