MADRAS WEEK AT VANILLA PLACE, MYLAPORE
Celebrate Madras/Chennai city’s 369th birthday with seven evenings of photography, folksongs and poetry! Seven nights of still life, song and sinful spoken word, saluting our city by the sea.
August 18 2008 – August 24 2008
MADRAS WEEK EVENTS AT VANILLA PLACE, MYLAPORE
CURATED BY CHANDRACHOODAN GOPALAKRISHNAN
AND SHARANYA MANIVANNAN,
WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF THE WORLD STORYTELLING INSTITUTE.
PHOTO EXHIBITION AND SALE
Opening night: August 18 2008
Time: 7pm
From August 18 to August 24 , organised by Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan and The Chennai Photowalk. Photos are of Chennai, as seen through the eyes of the photographers who participated in the first nine photowalks. All photos exhibited are available for purchase.
The Chennai Photowalk is a movement of the residents of Chennai to preserve the city’s heritage in the form of photos. Young and old, professional and the hobbyist, photographers of all description meet, walk and capture a view of the city mostly overlooked.
“THE SEA STORY”: A SPECIAL PERFORMANCE ON OPENING NIGHT
A special storytelling drama with folksongs by the Nochikuppam seafishing community, facilitated by the World Storytelling Institute and hosted by Eric Miller.
“The Sea Story” summary: One evening, a mother sings a lullaby to a child (Thalattu pattu). That night, some men go in a kuttumaram to fish in the sea (Rowing pattu).
One man is lost in a storm, and some women on shore lament for the lost man (Oppari pattu). Finally, the lost man re-appears – he was rescued by a sea-turtle! – and the community members are filled with joy (Celebration pattu).
SPOKEN WORD READINGS AND OPEN MICS
From August 18 to August 24 at 8pm every night, hosted by Sharanya Manivannan.
August 18 – “Cities+Pride” (Opening Night)
August 19 – “Cities+Envy”
August 20 – “Cities+Wrath”
August 21 – “Cities+Sloth”
August 22 – “Cities+Greed”
August 23 – “Cities+Gluttony”
August 24 – “Cities+Lust”
Local poets both famous and soon-to-be-famous explore the idea of cities as hubs of sins from different angles. Debauchery or divine redemption? A bit of both is promised each night, along with poetry and prose both original and admired. Performers include Kuttirevathi, Vivek Narayanan, Deesh Mariwala and Sharanya Manivannan.
Open mic readings are open to all. Please contact sharanya.manivannan@gmail.com.
About the organisers
Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan is a writer (of prose, poetry and carefully worded commercial fiction) and a photographer (of people, places and the occasional abstract) from Chennai. His great-grandfather was an epigraphist, translator and the first Tamil novelist. These genes, always unpredictable, waited three generations to surface in Chandrachoodan, causing him to take a great interest in his city and its heritage. Which in turn took form as a monthly photowalk.
As a spoken word artist, Sharanya Manivannan has performed to critical and popular acclaim at dozens of venues, including an abandoned pier, a cemetery and the 11th century Borobudur Temple, as well as more conventional locations. Her book of poems, Witchcraft, will be published this year, and carries a foreword from celebrated Sri Lankan-American poet Indran Amirthanayagam that describes it as “bloody, sexy, beguiling as in a dance with veils… a glorious, chilling and sensual debut”. Sharanya is committed to the creation of a spoken word scene in Chennai, and regularly co-organises and hosts events that encourage the open mic format, in which anyone willing to share their work is welcome.
Venue
Vanilla Place, No. 8/57, 1st Street Luz Avenue, near Nageswara Park, Mylapore.
For further details, please contact Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan – 9884467463
A Long Silence
… But only on the blog side of things.
Between our last post and now, we have organised and enjoyed the following readings:
1. Open mic over coffee — Barista, G. N. Chetty Road — April 12 2008.
2. The Blasphemy reading — Rama Temple. Koyambedu — April 20 2008.
3. Viva La Vida (in honour of Frida Kahlo’s 101st birthday and the macabre in general) — Madras War Cemetery, Nandambakkam — July 6 2008.
We didn’t blog about them here, though. Our bad. Many apologies and all that stuff.
You’ll hear again from us. Very soon.
March Events — If You Didn’t Come, You’ve Missed Them!
This month, the city saw open mic come to roost in serious style: first, with a reading at magical location, and then with a more mainstream one at a coffee hangout.
Poetry on the Pier @ Thalankuppam beach & pier.
March 9th 2008
Post-event – Sharanya’s post, an article in The New Indian Express
The Second Coming: The Reincarnated Poem Open Mic @ Mocha
March 21 2008
Pre-event – Meena’s post, Sharanya’s post, Chandrachoodan’s post
Post event – Chennairamblings’s post
Hello World!
Welcome.
Like any good story, the story of how this blog came to be has many entry points. It could start with the day someone first learnt how to read. The day someone else wrote their first alphabet out. It could start with a photowalk, an online chat, a few stillborn attempts. It could start with how someone moved to Chennai, got over her sulking, and proceeded to kerosene the city and lit a match called poetry. It could also start with how someone went to a show that promised one thing, delivered another, and left him sure he could do a hell of a lot better. Or it could start with the city itself, our grand old lady presiding over the Bay of Bengal. It could start anywhere. But the point is, you are here and so are we.
After kicking around talk about poetry and spoken word for a few months, and two reasonably well-received open-mic events, we’re finally putting it out there. Take a stroll (a surf?) through. You’ll see that most pages are still under construction, and there are probably a few oversights and teething problems. Bear with us as we work them through.
As a very brief introduction, this is what’s on our About page:
We’re a small, shifting group of individuals who care about the word — written, read, filmed, performed. Primarily, Chennai — the coastal southeastern Indian city that is sometimes still known as Madras — is our base, but this being the Internet, that matters only insofar as offline events.
The need for this blog came out of the need for spoken word in Chennai itself. When one of our core people — let’s call her the chief agitator — returned to the city in October of 2007, she took on as her mission this exciting task. As always happens, acquaintances turned into collaborators and collaborators into friends. And here we are.
We have a few different sections here, but all new material will first appear on the blog on the main page before getting categorised appropriately.
Other than regular posts on the blog, which will usually link to poetry and publishing news and articles, as well as announce events, the four main sections are:
Particles – These include interviews, personal essays, thoughts on all things poetry.
At Your Own Peril – Think you’re ready for the bigtime — criticism, blog gossip, calling yourself a poet? Submit something. Readers leave their feedback. Find out if your skin is thick enough.
Poetry & Punditry – We discuss poems we love, and why.
PoemP*rn — Some like their poems vanilla, strictly between page and reader. But if video, voice recordings and multimedia are more your thing, you might want to check out this section.
All the sections listed above accept submissions. Check out the individual pages for more.
Thanks for dropping by. Hope to see you around here again.
