The Word Warriors were at Dharan to perform poetry and educate the local poets on slam poetry
DHARAN: Jestha is here, and everyone can feel the temperature rising. The locals of Dharan gathered at the Big Futsal Cafe, Dharan-15, Dashrath Path for the event ‘Kabita is Cool’.
‘Kabita is Cool’ was organized under the Write to Speak project by the Word Warriors. The event was part of the spoken-word poetry group’s trip to Dharan along with Book Bus. The event opened to a poem by the poet Pramod KC who managed to cool off the audience at the venue with the use of his poetry.
Everyday verses
At the two-hour long event, the Word Warriors managed to enchant the audience with the eloquent use of words. The Word Warriors are one of the first local groups to master the use of spoken word poetry, which was evident at the event. Ever since the group started performing, spoken word poetry has been appealing to the young generation and Saturday, April 26, marked the end of their series of event that selected young talents interested in the genre.
At the event, well known Word Warriors’ like Ujjwala Maharjan, Yukta Bajracharaya, Nasala Chitrakar along with new talents such as KC, Nirajan Tripathi from Kavre, Rojina from Pokhara, Drisya Fuyal from Illam and Barsa Kandel from Chitwan presented their poems as well.
The Word Warriors recited their poems in an interesting manner using spoken language and expression that is similar to a performance. When asked about the program, Nepali language teacher and assistant professor Rajesh Kumar Yadav shared,
“Spoken word poetry is more of a performance rather than a recitation of the poem. This performance is what makes spoken word poetry interesting and captivating to the audience. Otherwise people don’t want to listen to a recitation of poetry.”
According to Maharjan, the Word Warriors were at Dharan to perform poetry and educate the local poets on slam poetry. Talking about the project she added, “Through the project ‘Right to Speak’, we teach young people how to express thoughts via poetic expression.”
60 youth from various schools, colleges and organizations will be selected to participate in a one week long workshop facilitated by the Word Warriors by the second week of Jestha. These participants (age group 14 to 25), will get trained on poetry writing and stage performance at the workshop.