Road from Makiwane, Mdantsane

Acrylic on Canvas by Amitabh Mitra

Allan Gray Orbis Foundation Poetry Workshop

I was amazed by the impromptu poetry creation and recitation by scholars from Selborne and Clarendon School who have received the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation Award. Ricardo Johnson, Development Officer of the Foundation, facilitated the programme.
The Workshop was held at Selborne School, East London on the 16th March 2012.

Poets Printery International Best Poetry Web Site Award for Creativity and New Age Poetry

This prestigious award will be given to websites which publish exclusively poetry and shows innovation in creativity.
Poetry and Blog sites publishing PoetryArt and showcasing Poetry Films would be preferentially considered.

If you feel that your blog / website deserves this award, please feel free to contact us with your website details.

amitabh@amitabhmitra.com

Cecilia Makiwane Hospital, Mdantsane

Acrylic on Canvas by Amitabh Mitra

Huzrat Kothi, Old Delhi

Watercolor by Amitabh Mitra

Janpath Days

janpath market
checking shawls,
life effervescing then in a close knit pashmina
i thought of words written on bargain threads
not knowing breaths had sealed then
an oddly different sky
at a connaught place middle street we kissed
life flowed in each other quashed in the shawl
within lips
i asked of a river
it had always escaped
afternoon of repertoires
of smalltalk
in a faint punjabi accent
touching your tongue
i saw a sun went hiding
in our ancestral sharing
eyes closed in pursuit
we hurled in colours and stars
of another momentary season.

Poem / Pastel / Watercolor by Amitabh Mitra

Gwalior

many aeons back
when rock changed faces
many a times and clan men
resisted irrefutably
time
the sky always gave way
to unhindered horizons
to newer lives
in dust torn
revelry
each time we passed the long
languorous tunnels of
waking
each time we found
ourselves on ledges
of looming betrayal
the fort grew taller and higher
overlapping many a skin
many a shadow
many a summers
and i thought
perhaps one day
you would tell me a secret
of holding the lizard
in my grip
of a moment
knee deep in a drying river
of your breath
navigating a stronghold
of refute
you told me
the ruddy earth would also change
the peacocks would be no more
fungus and fern would darken
such agreements
such love
insisted
and we would remain torn
answerable only to the wind.


why did we run away each time the
sun changed surfaces
why did we cross eye storms
ensnared long hidden stars
why did we eclipse in patterns
of lip talk on your neck
why did we turn one and only one
burnt one single night
why did we then never die
why did the fort
keep silent
why


beneath us
deep down
stayed the dargah
the mad man danced
looked at us
in sightless eyes
we had seen him before
much before
when the hot wind
blew away advancing
and departing reasons
a maratha willingness to melt away
at each nightend
we saw him still
shaking his head
his hands sang the song
of the next blitz
the dead around in cavernous
holes never slept
we knew
the rainriver
would storm down
in crypts and crevices
in sultry memory lanes
weather broken thickets
on to those
living and buried
we knew then
it was the moment
of a quiet dismissal
of unhastened departures.


families left for far shores
and houses sprung up on
rusty dreams
a dishevelled robe dragging
a far innocence
hands sought to hold a
belief
and eyes stored tears
unbelieving
on your lips i saw a murmur
loves disparity rootless in
undefined times
i told you the stillness of the fort
stillness of our drifting
stillness of the riversong
stillness of an everydaysky
yet
we lived
shattering long drawn thoughts
in strange dawns
in
old gwalior.

Poem and Ink Drawing by Amitabh Mitra