Daily Dispatch, South Africa’s premier news daily talks about the South African Protest Poetry Anthology -

Published in March 2012, the book is set to be launched at the National English Literary Museum at the Eastern Star Gallery in Grahamstown on 6 July, 5.30 pm. For Mitra, this launch is particularly important as it represents the voices of contemporary South African political poetry movements.
“This project is very important. It’s the first book ever produced after the democratic elections in South Africa regarding protest poetry,” said Mitra.
Mitra added that the protest poetry on a global scale is synonymous with protest poetry in South Africa during apartheid.
Other than featuring some of South Africa’s greats in the world of poetry, the book also has a foreword written by Ela Gandhi, granddaughter of the late and great Mahatma Gandhi.

To read full article, click here

Foreword by Ela Gandhi
Featuring some of the best representative voices of the South African Poetry Movement
Book Launch - July 6 2012
Eastern Star Education Centre, Anglo-African Street, Grahamstown.
Time 5.30 pm

Meet me there
Amitabh

Exhibiting as Posters, my Poetry/Art titled: Poems from Makiwane
in London on Saturday 12th May 2012 at the Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road

The original article can be found here.

There are websites – and there are websites.

So really, what makes this one different?  WHY this website?

One could try sales talk, I suppose.  “This website is different because it has all these salient features….”

Really, so what’s different about that!!    Besides, that’s not it at all….

When a doctor looks engagingly into your eyes and says quite convincingly that medicine and art and poetry can coexist, what choice do you have?  You can either wonder if he was going to stitch up your innards together, or smile at his innocence.  Or realize he knows what he’s talking about – the synchrony that holds the whole as one unit.

Well, you have here a doctor who’s telling you just that.  Not just telling you, but proving it.  Not just proving it, but living it.

“If music can provide relief to postoperative pains compared to a control group, surely there should be a way to diminish a disease and increase one’s immunity by finding certain colours and certain thoughts to the extent of awakening the subconscious mind to find just that reprieve to fight another assault of a disease?”

One one hand, he’s an orthopaedic surgeon who can fit out a perfect prosthetic.   And then, he does a right about, and with a few skimpy sketches and a splash of colors, will create for you a whole new world to live in, right down rainbow land.  Just when you’re looking around in wonder at the blues and greens and yellows, he’ll point out to a distant place and say, “that’s Gwalior, my hometown." And proceed to re-create for you a mirage – of old forts and palaces.  Of corridors and shadows and silhouettes.   Of girlish laughter, long tresses and anklets….of whispered words of love and heartfelt promises, of heated kisses and fervent lovemaking, wrapped up in a package of poetic outpourings.

Are you as confused as I am?  How exactly does he manage to keep the goriness of toying around with blood and bones from mingling with the resplendence of his artistic urges?  Where then does he store his love poems, caught so deftly as they swim along the current of his thoughts, presenting them to the world as heady mixes of passion?

Intrigued?  Interested?  You said it!

So now you know WHY!!

So then, step in – think, feel and share the beautiful world of the one and only Dr. Amitabh Mitra.