The APOGEE English Press recently had a chat with Akshaya Venugopal, the coordinator of Poetry Club (PC), to discuss the events they will be conducting during APOGEE. It was interesting to hear her thoughts—from the standpoint of a recreational club—on the club’s role in APOGEE. 

PC generally directs their attention towards literary events related to poetry, divided into two subparts namely English and Urdu/Hindi. They have four events for APOGEE this year. Ibadat-e-Mohabbat was a pre-APOGEE event based on Qawalli, conducted in collaboration with Ragamalika which turned out to be a huge success according to the club members post the event.

The other three are all legacy events that have been continued through many editions of APOGEE. The first is Chaupal, an Urdu talk-based event which will be held jointly with Urdu Daan and Mirchi Radio. Following Chaupal is Poetry Slam, an English slam poetry  event conducted in collaboration with Delhi Poetry Slam. Here, English poets will showcase their spoken-word poetry. Conspiring Minds—a game-based event that is ideated entirely by the first-yearites—consists of trivia questions about pop culture. The typical turnout is about 50–100 participants per year. Apart from the ongoing events, literary stalls will be set up around campus.

One of the major goals of the Poetry Club was to make their events ‘bigger and better’. Their events take place under the literary banner known as “Papyrus Trails”. A notable fact that Akshaya mentioned was that the crowd mainly attends technical events and they sparsely associate literary events with Papyrus Trails. Hence, the club is trying to highlight the banner of such events, and one way of doing so was to conduct all its events in the FD-II QT so that people can associate the name and location with the events.

As for the preparatory work, the club has to invite guests for Chaupal and Poetry Slam which entails going through multiple organisations, messaging them, negotiating and figuring out other constraints.

One of the biggest roadblocks PC faced this year was, ironically, the roadblock. Accessibility became an issue, which they had hoped would get sorted out by the time APOGEE actually began. Akshaya hopes this won’t reduce the incentive for people to join the Papyrus Trails events during the fest.

Overall, she found the experience of being coordinator rewarding as she got to interact with many talented people. She said that it gave her an idea on areas of improvement for future editions of APOGEE. As a conclusive remark, she hoped that this experience would allow for a smooth transition for the upcoming batch.