A two-day Second Bhubaneswar Poetry Festival (BPF 2017), a national festival of literature, art, culture, debate and discourse, would be held here from Saturday.
To add more literary flavour to this festive season, the BPF 2017, an initiative by Odisha’s leading publication house PEN IN Books and OdishaStory.com, is trying to unite celebrated literary figures, artists, musicians, cinema professionals and politicians from Odisha and other States of the nation under one roof.
The event would be held at Mayfair Convention.
The first day would be dedicated to literature and the second day for social debate, art, cinema and political discourse.
Eminent poets Ramakant Rath, Sitakant Mahapatra and poet and thinker Haraprasad Das and poet Sarat Kumar Dash would join the inaugural session.
On October 15, the session would have Minister Sashi Bhusan Behera, Congress leader Niranjan Patnaik, BJP leader Bijay Mohapatra, Utkal Bharat president Kharabela Swain and BJD leader Arun Sahoo. Authors of different Indian languages including over 70 Odia authors, actress and director Bijaya Jena and Bollywood lyricist and poet Dushyant would join as speakers.
Poet Haraprasad Das said, “The Bhubaneswar Poetry Festival is designed to be a landmark event for showcasing Indian literature. It hopes to bring together three generations of poets, authors and artists. The emphasis, of course, would be the contemporary new literature in all its splendour, written anywhere in the world, particularly in Odisha.”
As many as 10 young Odia authors would be awarded with PEN IN Young Author Award 2017, said author and festival director Subhransu Panda.