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Poetry festival begins

DU CORRESPONDENT
Speakers at the 19th Jatiya Kabita Utshab (national poetry festival) on the Dhaka University (DU) Central Library premises yesterday urged to resist communal forces through poems and writings.
The two-day festival started at 10:00am with a colourful procession, followed by placing wreaths at the graves of National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam, artists Zainul Abedin and Qamrul Hasan, and the
Central Shaheed Minar.
Poet Shamsur Rahman inaugurated the festival where Kabita
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Parishad President Rabiul Hussain presided.
Slogan of this year's poetry festival was, "Kabita Pratirodher Hatiar (Poem is the weapon of resistance)."
Poet Nirmalendu Goon received this year's national poem prize valued at Tk 25,000.
Organisers said about two hundred renowned poets from home and abroad joined the festival attended by hundreds of poem lovers.
Urging the poets to resist the communal forces through their poems and writings, Rabiul Hossain said, "We have been organising the festival for nearly two decades and we are determined to keep our tradition alive."
"Anti-liberation and anti-cultural forces are trying to create panic among the people of free thoughts and those who love poems," said General Secretary of the organisation Samudra Gupta, adding that it is the time to resist the evil forces.
"Kabita utshab is, in one hand, a festival of poets' gathering; on the other hand, it is the centre for protest against and resistance to the evil forces," said convenor of the Parishad Habibullah Sirazi.
Poets of different languages, including Rameshwar Bhattacharya, Jaya Goala and Shefali Dev Barman from India and poets of indigenous people of Bangladesh attended the festival.
At the inaugural session, poet Aslam Sani read out a condolence resolution on all poets and writers who died after thelast year's poetry festival.
DU teacher Mohammad Samad read out the declaration paper.
Joint convenor Golam Kibria Pinu also spoke at the festival.
In the second session, poets from different parts of the country read out their poems.
The yearly poetry festival was introduced in 1986 mainly to protest the then autocratic rule of general HM Ershad.