Poetry to me is like a refuge: Selina Nwulu

While there was a mob jostling around personalities like

Barkha Dutt

and Shashi Tharoor as they ambled down the guest lounge at the

Times Litfest

on Saturday, there was one lady who sat quietly in a corner table, jotting down on a tiny notebook.

Selina Nwulu

, a social researcher and campaigner, wanted to have her thoughts in place before she goes on stage for the

Poetry

Performance session. A Young Poet Laureate of London, Nwulu appeared confident and fresh.

“A sense of belongingness and un-belongingness interests me and my poems are an essence of it”, she told a sea of audience. Wearing a patterned dress and head gear, this was Nwulu’s first visit to India but she struck a chord with the audience right away.

The session began with moderator

Indrajit Hazra

introducing Nwulu, followed by her poetry performances. In the packed hall, listeners had a lot to absorb from her verses, which as she later explained were both politically-charged narratives and observations of a young mind.

As a Nigerian immigrant in London, Nwulu explained how growing up in a small town and being the only black girl in her school gave her a constant feeling of “being migrants”. What best sums up her (and most of our) situation is a line from her poem ‘Homecoming’ which she read aloud to the crowd. The narrator in ‘Homecoming’ goes back to her roots and finds that ‘the village with arms like palm trees wait for me’ and ‘I am the mosquito’s new friend’.

There were two reading sessions and a round of discussion. Hazra promptly tweaked the session with equal amounts of humour and insight to many aspirants present there. As he later prompted spectators to “question, comment and ask silly things”, the queries were both out of concern and a genuine interest in poetry. For Cecilia Abraham, a 41-year-old Delhi-based poet, Nwulu’s poetry performance is a mix of both passion and curiosity.

Another listener wanted to know if “poetry still sells?” and to which Nwulu explained how saleability when it came to poems was more about the connections they make with people, however small the circle of readers be. The discussion then followed with different types of poetry in the current era and Hazra’s pleasant banter kept making the audience loosen up a little bit more at a time.Sales Special Microsites