Date: Saturday, 2nd February
Time: 10:30 - 13:30
Venue: National Gallery of Modern Art, Auditorium
Conducted by: Sampurna Chattarji

This workshop will look at poetry as play. The attempt will be not to teach poetry, or even write poetry, but to experience poetry — with one’s body, with one’s senses, with sometimes an abandonment of logic and sometimes a rigorous application of it. Above all, an appreciation of each poem as a space that can be entered for the sheer enjoyment of it. To look at poetry through the prisms of sound, imagination, everyday language and beat, and to enable the kids to see for themselves the many possibilities that open out though that mysterious arrangement of words on the page that we call a poem.

(More about the workshop leader and details on how to register below the fold.)

Award-winning poet, fiction-writer and translator Sampurna Chattarji was born in Africa, grew up in Darjeeling, graduated from New Delhi, and worked in advertising with JWT, Kolkata and Mumbai for seven years before becoming a full-time writer. She is the author of The Greatest Stories Ever Told and translator of Abol Tabol: The Nonsense World of Sukumar Ray, both published by Penguin India. Her books for adults include her poetry book, Sight May Strike You Blind, published by the Sahitya Akademi in 2007, edited and with a foreword by Keki Daruwalla. She was the recipient of the Charles Wallace India Trust Creative Writing Scholarship 2005, which took her to Edinburgh, and was the Indian children’s writer chosen to participate in the Highlights Writers Workshop at Chautauqua, New York in July 2006. Sampurna is an Executive Committee Member of the PEN All-India Centre, Mumbai.
For more information, please see the following links:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

To register
Please mail kalaghoda DOT workshops AT gmail DOT com with the subject line ‘Poetry appreciation for children.’
In your mail, please include:
1. The child’s name, your name, an email address and a phone number (preferably cellular)
2. A line or two about the child’s previous experience in this area
3. A line or two about what you’re looking for from this workshop.
4. The child should carry ONE favourite poem by a favourite poet to the workshop.

There are only 20 seats available. Please register early!

Please inform us well in time if you need to drop out, so we can free the seat for someone else.

Please make sure your child is at the workshop venue 15 minutes before the posted start time.

We will inform all registered participants about any changes in schedules. But please keep an eye on this post as well for any changes.