The title “Impact of globalization on Marathi Poetry” sounded promising. As it was slotted right after the Translation workshops I was in a right frame of mind to listen to the poems.

The event was moderated by  Hemant Divate, a young poet who is also a publisher. Others were unknown to me but perhaps familiar to the regulars of Marathi poetry. I am still stuck into the pre- globalization era as I realized .

I was looking forward to listening to the panel’s discussions about their poems, but that didn’t happen. The poets preferred to communicate only through their poems. No discussions took place.

I found the poems mostly mediocre with an exception of Divate himself, and a young poet from Buldhana, Manoj Surendra Pathak. His poem about Death of a man and how it affected his son reached even those who didn’t completely understand Marathi. The words were raw, and emotions true. I thought this was the best poem of the evening.

Another one which I liked was- Sachin Ketkar’s poem in which a lonely man sits in front of his computer, waiting to chat with someone. But even here he is disappointed as no one would chat with him.

Beyond a few references to technology, like computers, chat rooms, and some profanity I didn’t find any marked difference between pre and post globalization poems. Free verse is not newto Marathi poetry. As for the content, God traveling the world in a helicopter, saying ‘Fuck You’ to his devotees, was neither amusing, nor shocking, nor interesting. As a result everyone just waited for that rather long poem to be over.

Dilip Zaveri read the English translations of a few of these poems. Some were done decently, but most were just word to word translation, missing out the essence completely. One was a rather tongue in cheek poem where the poet had strung together street signs, and the messages which we see everyday around us. The poem had a rather humorous feel to it. But when translated, the entire line up of messages became meaningless. Lost in Translation- once again?

Satisfying or not, inclusion of regional language literature in Kala Ghoda Arts Festival added an interesting dimension to the events. How about getting us some popular Marathi  theater guys next year ?