Dharwad is gearing up to host the third edition of the literary festival ‘Dharwad Sahitya Sambhrama’ or the Dharwad literary festival. The three-day event will open on January 16 at the Golden Jubilee auditorium on the Karnatak University campus.
H S Shivaprakash will inaugurate the festival at 10 am on Friday. Former Union Minister Veerappa Moily will be the chief guest at the concluding function on Sunday evening.
Lovers of literary works will have an opportunity to see and interact with eminent writers of all hues at one place. Buoyed by the success of the two editions of the ‘Dharwad Sahitya Sambhrama’ held in January 2013 and 2014, the organisers have embarked on the third edition of the three-day festival.
This literary festival will be different from the routine literary festivals as there will be no ‘Sammelana Adhyaksha’ or 'the festival president; and no procession of the adhyaksha. There will also be no long and boring speeches, and the usual protocols like presenting the garland or memento.
There will be no resolutions passed to be sent to the government for implementation.
President of the organising committee, noted critic Giraddi Govindraj said the festival will have sessions on various forms of literature.
However, these sessions will not have a president to sum up the speeches made by the participants. On the contrary the participants will read a poem or a literary work and then there will be questions posed by the moderator and the audience. The literary luminaries who participated in sessions as either panelists or moderators, will not be there on the dais this time.
Instead, many of them will be amongst the audience. Leading writers Chandrashekhar Patil, H S Venkatesh Murthy, C N Ramachandran, Malati Pattanashetty and actor-director T S Nagabharana will sit among the audience as special invitees.
Multi-lingual actor Prakash Rai will participate in the discussion on ‘Language and Acting’ on the concluding day.
“Inspired by the Jaipur festival, we decided to organise the Sahitya Sambhrama in 2013 with some modification and this time it will continue,” said Giraddi. At the Jaipur festival, there were discussions on the craft of memoirs and in Dharwad festival, there will be a discussion on contemporary issues like the lack of detective novels in Kannada; problems faced by translators; role of small journals and papers in the development of literature; relevance of branding literature as ‘Muslim/woman/Dalit’ literature; recitation of poems of legendary poets; status of Kannada as a medium of instruction and status of literature in school/college textbooks, among others.
There will also be discussions on literary works of different writers.
Over 200 writers will participate in the meet. It will provide an opportunity for book lovers to see writers of various hues and interact with them,” he said. Leading publishers will have their stalls at the venue.
H S Shivaprakash, K S Nissar Ahmed, Jayant Kaikini, S Shettar, Vaidehi, Arvind Malagatti, Abdul Rashid, K V Narayana, B T Lalita Nayak, Aa Raa Mitra, Vivek Shanbhag, Vasudhendra, Veena Bannanje, T P Ashok, K V Akshara, M S Shriram, Yogaraj Bhat, Suresh Heblikar, M S Murthy and other writers will participate in various sessions. There will be cultural programmes involving Hindustani vocal recital by Pandit Venkateshkumar, staging of plays and singing of Ananda Kanda’s poem.
Giraddi said the number of delegates has been restricted to 200 due to space crunch. LED screens will be erected outside the auditorium where seating arrangement for 400 people will be made to enable them to watch the proceedings.
No delegate fee will be charged for such visitors.
