Kadengodlu Kavya Prashasti awardee says written word is threatened

Mangalore Today News Network

Udupi, Aug 10, 2016: Rajendra Prasad, poet, on Aug 9, Tuesday said that the written word was now facing a threat from all kinds of “isms”, including fundamentalism.  Speaking after receiving the Kadengodlu Kavya Prashasti at a function organised by Rashtrakavi Govinda Pai Samshodhana Kendra and Academy of General Education in Udupi.

The award is given annually in the memory of the poet late Kadengodlu Shankar Bhat. An anthology of Poet Prasad’s poems titled ‘Laona Kanasu’ was released.

Poet Prasad said that the threat to the written word was confined not just to the subject of history alone. Earlier, people used to fear to talk openly. But now due to the social media, the written word was under threat. “The question is how to overcome this fear? I do it through the means of poems,” he said. Asserting that there was need for poems to get a new touch, Prasad questioned why the Kannada poems should still follow the ‘Navya Marga’ in poetry. Poetry now needed to move beyond it, he said and added that new features will come in Kannada poetry in the future.

Mahabaleshwar Rao, writer, said that the old poets such as Valmiki, Vyasa, Kumaravyasa, Pampa and others, and their works were still relevant. Their works were read, discussed and analysed even now.

H. Krishna Bhat, director of the Kendra; Aerya Lakshminarayana Alva, writer; K. Eshwar Bhat, and K.S. Bhat, sons of Kadengodlu Shankar Bhat; and H. Shantharam, administrative officer of Academy of General Education, were present.