In our line-up, we had a famed Marathi lokshahir and activist, a viral video star who writes on gender and a Hindustani poet performing works on his home state Jammu. We also had an acclaimed multilingual rap crew that challenges inequality in India through their lyrics and a theatre company that fuses music and movement to breathe fresh life into classic Indian poems.

Poets in India have innovated with different forms for centuries, incorporating gesture, theatre and song in their performances to make rich verse accessible to audiences. The performances at this special event were introduced by Nitika Khaitan, Godrej India Culture Lab’s summer scholar from Yale University, who had been researching Mumbai’s performance poetry culture. Read her blogpost about her reasearch here.