OdishaPlus Bureau
“Poetry is the super soul. Spiritual poetry is the connection between mortal and immortal, Brahma and Param Brahma. Where there is poetry, there is God,” said Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly Speaker Hriday Narayan Dikshit, while speaking at the 39th World Poets Congress (WPC).
Inaugurating the spiritual poetry session of WPC, Dikshit said, “India is itself poetry. Rigved is the ancient poetry of the world. The source of poetry is written in Rigved. In India, there are so many ancient poets and poetry. Our spiritual poetry is the guiding force in our life.”
The river, mountain, forest everything in India is the source of poetry. These are the image of poetry. There is a similarity between Odisha and Northern India. Odisha is so beautiful in all respect like Northern India. Every state of India, language, culture, tradition — all are poetry, he added.
In his talk titled ‘What does Poetry Make?’, Dilip Naik, Professor, English & Foreign Language University, Hyderabad, delved upon this complex question with inferences from writings of some of the greatest poets of all time. He compared the views of famous poets over the ages – Osip Mandelstam, Adorno, Auden, and others – on this question. For Mandelshtam, poetry was the bread of the soul, not only for the poet himself but for the people as a whole. “What poetry makes is not a thing or a change in the objective world. But it is an event of consciousness, and in that which is not visible, that transgresses the limits of reason, that hopes against the tyranny of facts, it is this hope that keeps us significantly alive, keeps us human, for it has been said that we do not live by bread alone. Poetry is thus a hymn to the dawn of consciousness,” Naik stated.
So, what poetry makes happen is not a historical event. It gifts the possibility of a different form of life, a metahistory of experience which emanates from the intersection of time with the timeless. Poetry enables us to trust in the grace of existence, he concluded.
Among others, Dr. Maurus Young, President, WCP; Prof. Ernesto Kahan, First Vice President, World Academy of Art & culture; Dr. Maria Eugenia Soberanis, General Secretary, World Academy of Arts & culture and Eminent writer and poet Prasanna Kumar Patasani were present on the occasion.
