Normally we would not have a clue what Konkani poetry is until we ran across a story that introduced us to a poetic form that was very new to us. This story was about the Kavita Fest, which is organized every year by the Kavita Trust, for promoting Konkani poetry. The hosts of this year’s Kavita Fest 2012 were Regina D’Souza and Bernard D’Souza. This poetry festival has been organized for the 6th time at Moodubelle in Udupi District this year.
H.M. Pernal, a Mangalore-based Konkani writer, poet and critic noted that Konkani poetry is usually written in Devanagari, Kannada, Malayalam, Roman and Urdu scripts, and has been documented only in the past 100 years. He said that Konkani poetry in Kannada has 3 phases:
Phase 1: (“Dev bhakt”) from 1900 to the1950s, had devotional hymn-like poems with poets such as Louis Mascarenhas.
Phase 2: had lyrical rebellious poetry with poems focusing on social causes with poets such as Charles Francis D'Costa (“ChaFra”), who wrote Zaage Kavi.
Phase 3: The “new age” poetry of the third phase had “free thinker”, well-travelled poets, who wrote poetry in Konkani.
There are many diverse categories of poetry that you may not be familiar with, but you can certainly appreciate its style, aesthetics, deep sense of tradition and rhythm. Konkani poetry has a certain mystic to us, because it addresses social awareness that is written in free verse and haikus. Although we do not personally understand the Goan language, the expressions of Konkani poetry obviously has a rich heritage and legacy that relates to the human condition and thus, can relate to all of us.
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