Kategorie » Lesung/Vortrag/Diskussion

Susmita Paul is an Indian by birth. When she was 12/13, she decided to become a Professor of English Literature. During the same phase, she wrote her first poem as she recuperated from a bad case of Malaria. She went on to do her Masters in English Literature in her hometown Kolkata. She was blissfully pursuing her MPhil when life took her off the track and onto the path of creative writing. In the cold winter of Budapest, she started her first ever blog which went on to garner a strong 21,000 readers’ footsteps. The blog was ambitiously called ‘Lustrous Lives’. In keeping with her continuous desire to attempt new things, she worked for a while as an Independent Researcher, publishing academic articles. She continued to write poetry as she travelled across Europe with her husband who was pursuing an Erasmus Mundus scholarship programme. She almost forgot the pain of not being able to complete her MPhil. And, that she is taking her daily dose of medication to keep the chemicals in her brain in balance. Then Vietnam happened. A gush of hyperactivity it was. She met and interacted with young, upcoming artists. She fell in love all over again. She scribbled poetry as if it was a madness. All this in-between teaching English language to toddlers in a kindergarten in Hanoi. And then the transforming event happened: motherhood. Motherhood brought unknown joys and unknown fears simultaneously. As she waited for her papers to be in order, almost a year passed by without her husband. Her husband was then a doctoral student at KFU, Graz. She came to a new life with her almost-one year old. She came to a life that unearthed a lot of pain, guilt and anger. She relapsed. With a lot of grit on part of her and her partner, she eventually could walk through it all. And at the end of the tunnel was light and poetry. Susmita continues to write poetry and very short prose. Her first book of poetry will be published in Bengali in 2019. She will bring with her a chapbook of some of her English poems to the event. This is a special event, since it is the first ever solo Poetry reading evening.