Motherhood Club Celebrated National Poetry Month

In a departure from its regular poetry writing programs and open mic poetry sessions, Motherhood Club celebrated April 2023 as National Poetry Month. Members were invited to volunteer and be part of this unique poetry extravaganza. It was a marvelous opportunity to celebrate the expressiveness, delight and pure charm of poetry. All the credit goes to the Motherhood team for organising the largest literary celebration in India and propagating poetry. Poetry as is known, vents out an amazing wealth of emotions, humour and human experience, encourages people to appreciate the world around and empathize with one another.

Members were invited to render a prompt for the poetry, every alternate day and to be a jury as well for the same.The response was overwhelming as 72 members participated in the month-long extravaganza, whereby 417 poems were received, (305 in Hindi and 112 in English) on 15 different topics.

The range of topics were as amazing as the persona of jury members. Ms Umang Sarin set the ball rolling on 1st April, with her beautiful prompt बसत/Spring, followed by काट/Thorns (Ranjana Majumdar); इधनष/Rainbow (Tapasya Sureka); यार/Love (Sneh Dutt); मझस

मलाकात/Discovering Myself (Manjeet Rajbeer); आस/Tears (Sunita Gupta); इतजार/Awaiting (Aparna Sharma); ख़त/Letters (Pratibha Prasad); वनता स झकना/Humility ( Mukesh Bhatnagar); अकलापन/Loneliness (Monica Goel Dewan); चमकार/Miracle (Pooja Dixit); कजस/Miser (Aparna Ghosh); हरयाली/Greenery (Kamal Nimodia); सकनयत/Blissfulness (Rashmi Sanganeria); मयादा/Honour ( Swetha Sundar).

Ms Akta Sehgal Malhotra, Ila Pachauri, Swetha Sundar and Saradha Iyer participated in all the 15 topics, followed by Harminder Kaur, Jayashree Sriram and Pratibha Prasad (14), Pooja Dixit & Babita Chouhan (13), Sunita Gupta & Mukesh Bhatnagar (12), Manju Lata (10) and rest in one or more than one. Of the 72 participants 42 got Certificates of Excellence, as declared by the respective jury member. It was heartening to see Ila Pachauri getting 14 certificates, , Akta Sehgal Malhotra 11 , Pratibha Prasad 9 and Swetha Sundar 7, including Hattrick performance Certificates by them. Another deserving Hattrick Certificate winner was Suraksha Pruthi Khurana. The only three poets who received Bilingual certificates were Sneh Dutt, Ila Pachauri & Akta Sehgal

The topic that took the fancy of participants were found to be इतज़ार / Awaiting, on which 43 poems were received, followed by 42 on आस /Tear, 35 on मझस मरी मलाकात / Discovering Myself, 32 on काट /Thorns, and 30 on मयादा / Honour.

Each member participant went on to raise the bar with every prompt, making it virtually difficult for the jury to select the winners. Each poem was found extraordinary and a treat to soul. Collectively they all make an encyclopaedia on expressiveness.

Kudos to Motherhood Club team, for giving liberty to the members and making April, so thoughtfully memorable

Mukesh Bhatnagar Co-Editor Anatarman