Speakeasy #17 featured poems, music and dancing from the Banglar Kantha Sahitya Parishad (Banglar Kantha Literary Association). The poems were recited in Bengali and Tamil with English translations read out by Singaporean poets Cyril Wong, Tania De Rozario, Alvin Pang, Marc Nair and Jennifer Champion.
I blogged about these poets before after the Migrant Worker Poetry Competition at the National Library last November. The Dhaka Tribune has an informative article on the Banglar Kantha Literary Association with comments from Alvin Pang providing some context for their poetry in Singapore.
“We share this city together,” Ping [Sic] said. “Why should one set of human voices be less heard and less valued than others? We all need to listen more attentively to each other. This is a late start, but better late than never.”
The evening was held at The Mill as part of the Destruction and Rebirth Festival.
Not being much of a poet, I talked to a few briefly about cricket and how Bangladesh would fare in the upcoming World Cup.
Please let me know any names of the poets whose names I didn't catch so I can ensure the captions are correct.