The first weekend of August saw the inaugural Matwaala: South Asian Diaspora Poets Festival in Austin, Texas. The festival was created by writer Usha Akella and took place at various locations throughout Austin, including Austin Community College, Raindrop Turkish House, and Casa de Luz.

Describing the conference in the Huffington Post, writer Anis Shivani said, “As the weekend progressed it went beyond a formal convocation to listen to poetry and became instead a celebration of the rarefied stuff that goes into making poetry.” He gave the following understanding of “Matwaala”: “Matwaala is literally Hindi for someone who is drunk, inebriated. But more than that the word is used in a transferred sense for someone who is a free spirit, someone who doesn’t care for things, someone who does what he/she wishes to do.”

Pramila Venkateswaran reported on the conference for AWP:

Matwaala’s mission is to grow the presence of South Asian poets in [the] mainstream American literary landscape. As Usha Akella, the festival’s director, says, ours is a ‘journey of collectivity, based on inclusiveness.’ While the festival may be focused on South Asian writing, Akella emphasizes, ‘No poet is a fine poet or a great poet only because he or she belongs to this or that nativity. A good poet is one because he/she is attuned to the universal unmasking itself in his/her individual sensibility.’

Look for a complete summary of the festival in October’s issue of the Writer’s Chronicle.