Indian poetry festival in Buenos Aires on June 11

An Indian poetry festival is being organized in association with the prestigious Inter American University (UIA) in Buenos Aires on June 11 along with the Buenos Aires Poetry Festival.

In the festival Indian poet-diplomat Abhay K. will read his new poems written during his stay and travels in Latin America, along with legendary poet-dancer of Argentina, Myrta Barvie, and poet Yuyutsu R.D. Sharma.

He has also been invited to deliver a talk on 3,000 years of Indian poetry at the Argentinian Council of International Relations (CARI) on June 10 on the sidelines of the festival.

His poems on Jorge Luis Borges, the famous Argentinian writer, César Vallejo, one of the greatest poets of Peru, Ghalib, and Dara Shikoh have been translated into Spanish by Professor Alicia Silvestre Miralles from Spain.

Last month the Indian poet-diplomat was invited by the Peruvian House of Literature in Lima to read his poems and have a literary dialogue with the Peruvian poet Oscar Limache, said a statement.

Myrta Barvie is known as an Argentinian icon of Indian dance. She was trained in Bharatnatyam at Kalakshetra under Rukmini Devi and did her Arangetram there. Later she learnt Odissi from Guru Keluchara Mohapatra and got a Nritya Visharad degree from Kala Vikash Kendra in Orissa. She went on to learn Kuchipudi at the Kuchipudi Art Academy in Chennai, from Master Vempati Chinnasatyam.

Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore's connections with poet Victoria Ocampo of Argentina is well known. Tagore had stayed at a villa in the suburb of Buenos Aires in Argentina for two months in November and December of 1924 on the request of Argentinian writer Victoria Ocampo. Later she organized an exhibition of Tagore´s paintings in Paris in 1930. Jorge Luis Borges had read 'Mahabharata' in German and was fascinated by the Yaksha-Yudhisthara dialogue and borrowed Indian philosophy of non-dualism (Advaita) heavily in his short-stories.

The Indian poetry festival and talk on 3,000 years of Indian poetry, all organized by the Embassy of India here, are set to strengthen India- Argentina literary and cultural ties.