When Arwa Ali Asgar moved to Thiruvananthapuram from Mumbai six years ago after her marriage, one of the things she looked forward to was a venue to perform spoken word poetry. She not only got stages to perform but also brought together a group of like-minded spoken word poetry lovers and launched Uninked Poetry last year. “I have been writing poems ever since I could remember.
I got introduced to spoken word poetry via internet when I was in college. It is poetry that you write to perform. The process of writing a poem that someone else is going to read is slightly different from writing one that you are going to perform,” says Arwa.
She adds, “People often say that they don’t understand poetry. Here you get access to poetry as a performance. People think poetry is a high-brow thing.
There is nothing like that. Spoken word is to poetry what movies are to novel.” Participants of Uninked Poetry show at Harfest| Photo Credit:SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT Within one month of coming to Thiruvananthapuram, Arwa, 31, got the opportunity to perform at an open mic session conducted by The Reading Room.
“After that I presented spoken word poetry at all the venues I could get and got good responses as well. I wondered why more people were not coming forward. I have been in literary circles where I saw people who could write well but were not willing to come on to the stage.
Eventually I caught up with a few and we decided to do a spoken word show. The first show of Uninked was at Ke.
