About the event: Prof. Neelima Shukla-Bhatt, Ms. Arundhathi Subramaniam and Ms. Mamang Dai will recite and reflect on poetry which invokes nature in a spiritual context. Works of Bhakti poets will be discussed, alongside poems from the indigenous cultures of the North East, as well as the works of the panelists themselves.  

Details of the Speakers - 

Panelist 1 - Prof. Neelima Shukla-Bhatt 

Neelima Shukla-Bhatt is Professor of South Asia Studies at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, USA. She is the author of Narasinha Mehta of Gujarat: A Legacy of Bhakti in Songs and Stories (2015) and co-author (with Surendra Bhana) of A Fire that Blazed in the Ocean: Gandhi and the Poems of Satyagraha in South Africa, 1909-1911 (2011). She has also published articles on woman poet Mira, garba (the goddess worship dance of Gujarati women), goddess traditions of Gujarat, commercials for faith healers on South Asian TV channels in the diaspora, and the role of poetry and music in Gandhi’s work. 

Panelist 2 - Arundhathi Subramaniam 

Arundhathi Subramaniam is the award-winning author of 12 books of poetry and prose. Her volume of poetry, When God is a Traveller (2014) was the Season Choice of the Poetry Book Society, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. She has written five books of poetry, most recently Love Without a Story (2019) and in prose, her books include The Book of Buddha, the bestselling biography of a contemporary mystic, Sadhguru: More Than a Life and most recently, Adiyogi: The Source of Yoga (co-authored with Sadhguru). As editor, her most recent book is the Penguin anthology of sacred poetry, Eating God. 

She is the recipient of the inaugural Khushwant Singh Prize, the Raza Award for Poetry, the Zee Women’s Award for Literature, the International Piero Bigongiari Prize in Italy, the Mystic Kalinga award, the Charles Wallace, Visiting Arts and Homi Bhabha Fellowships, among others. She has written extensively on culture and spirituality, and has worked over the years as poetry editor, cultural curator and critic. She has worked as Head of Dance and Chauraha (an inter-arts forum) at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai, and has been editor of the India domain of the Poetry International Web.

Panleist 3 - Mamang Dai 

Mamang Dai is a poet, novelist and journalist based in Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh. Her work has appeared in several journals and anthologies and she has written extensively about the culture and history of her state. Her published works include a poetry collection, River Poems, a book of interlinked stories, The Legends of Pensam, a novella, Stupid Cupid, a novel, The Black Hill, for which she won the 2017 Sahitya Akademi Award, and two children’s books, Once Upon a Moontime, and The Sky Queen. She received the Verrier Elwin Award in 2003 for her book, Arunachal Pradesh: The Hidden Land, and was awarded the Padma Shri in 2011 in recognition of her contributions in the fields of literature and education.