A two-week long exhibition opened on the occasion of World Poetry Day and the International Day of Colour by an initiative of Goan artists and poets in collaboration with Camões — Centro Língua de Portuguesa. It saw artworks, poetry reading sessions and performances in response to the poetry and other expressions of various artists honouring the land, its people, language and heritage.

Reading sessions also celebrated the birth centenary of one of the most celebrated and widely translated Portuguese poets, Eugénio de Andrade, also known by the pseudonym José Fontinhas. Poems were read in Portuguese, English and Italian.

Other performances included ‘Mai in me – Embodied Earthivism’ by multi-disciplinary artist Pushpanjali Sharma with poetry reading by Salil Chaturvedi, in response to Miriam Koshy’s work ‘Mhadeianjali’ with musical accompaniment by Jatin Vidyarthi. After a poetry performance by a spoken word poet Rochelle D’Silva, there was an interactive session with the Portuguese poet Rui Cóias in conversation with Delfim Correia da Silva on ‘Eugénio de Andrade and the Contemporary Portuguese Poetry’.

The closing of the exhibition ‘Poetry in Colour’ was observed with two performances. ‘The Flower Women’, an ode to the floral–garland weaving women of Goa was performed by Impana Kulkarni, accompanied by Ankita Naik and Reshma Jose. The choreography was in response to Cynthia Chowgule, Shilpa Nayudu and Miriam Koshy’s artworks, also drawing on Eugenio de Andrade’s poetry and Partho Hazarika’s music.

The last performance, titled ‘Weight of Sense’, was by spoken word artist Priyal Prana and Subhash Sajja, a multi-instrumentalist and music composer based in Goa. The performance was of a set of six poems exploring the constant death and rebirth of survival instincts, amid the thick of disappearing ecosystems and the collective self.