2-day poetry festival begins at DU tomorrow

With the theme "Kobita Moitrir, Kobita Shantir" (poem for friendship, poem for peace), a two-day 30th Jatiya Kabita Utshab (national poetry festival) will begin on Dhaka University's Central Library premises from tomorrow.

Being organised by Jatiya Kabita Parishad, the festival will start off with the placing of wreaths at National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam's grave and Central Shaheed Minar's altar at 10:00am.

The festival will comprise poetry recitations and seminars as per a press conference of the parishad at the Sagar-Runi auditorium of Dhaka Reporters Unity yesterday.

This year, a large number of local and foreign poets and recitation artists will take part. Previous years had seen the arrival of poets from Sweden, Norway, India, Morocco, Slovakia, Nepal, and Taiwan.

Poets Lars Hager, Bengt Berg and Lotte Sederholms from Sweden; Erling Ktensen from Norway, Milan Richar from Slovakia, Benaissa Bouhmala, Lee Kuei-Shien and Fang Yaw-Chien from Taiwan; Ansar ul Haque and Sankar Saha from West Bengal; Dilip Das and Akbar Ahmed from Tripura and Chandrima Dutta from Assam are scheduled to participate. 

The parishad President poet Muhammad Samad will preside over the programme. Tarik Sujat, Rabiul Husain, Aslam Sani and Kazi Rosy spoke yesterday among others.