A national level trade fair and book festival, being organized by the Bodo Writers’ Academy (BWA) in collaboration with the National Book Trust of India and the Education Department, Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) entered the eight day in Kokrajhar.
A national level multi-lingual poets’ meet was also organized on the occasion.
The festival is being organized at Bodofa Cultural Complex.
Talking to media persons, Rajendra Basumatary, the President of the Bodo Writers’ Academy, said, “The national level trade fair and book festival, which was started on March 11, will conclude on March 20.”
Basumatary also informed, “Today, we organized an All India Multilingual Poets’ Meet in the auditorium hall at Bodofa Cultural Complex of Kokrajhar. An inaugural programme of the poets’ meet was presided over by Mohan Singh, who is an eminent Dogri poet. Dr Mongolsing Hazowary and Boro Somaj President Rajendra Boro were present as Guests of Honour at the poets’ meet.”
Basumatary further informed that poets from Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Punjab, Haryana, Manipur, Tripura, Delhi, West Bengal, Jammu & Kashmir and Assam participated in the poets’ meet.
The poets of different languages of the country read out their poems in their mother languages as well as the translated versions in English and Hindi too. The poets’ meet was organized by the Sahitya Akademi and the Bodo Writers’ Academy. The welcome address in the poets’ meet was delivered by Gaoutam Paul, Office-in-Charge, Sahitya Akademi.
The poets who participated in the poets’ meet include Sarjoo Katkar (Kannada), Kushal Dutta (Assemese) , Sebanti Ghosh (Bengali) , Dhirju Jyoti Basumatary (Bodo), Chandra Subadini Devi (Monipuri), Suroth Narzary (Bodo), Manshoor Balihali (Kashmiri) , Santi Basumatary (Bodo), Anju Narzary (Bodo) , Payyanur Ramesh Pai (Kankani), Phool Chandra Jha Praveen (Maithali) , Aparna Mohanty (Odia), Aazim Kohli ( Urdu), OP Suresh (Malayalam), Sumati Lande (Marathi), Uday Thulung (Nepali), Madan Mohan Soren (Santhali), Veena Shringi (Sindhi), Nesamithran ( Tamil), Narayan Das (Sanskrit).
The souvenir titled ‘Gourang Gathwn’ was released by Mohan Singh in the poets’ meet presided over by Rajen Basumatary, President of the Bodo Writers Academy. Hundreds of teachers from West Bengal also participated in the programme.
Rakesh Kumar, Assistant Director of National Book Trust of India said that they have been working to promote all languages of the society across the State while Bodo Writers’ Academy has been doing good job to promote Bodo language poets.