Return of Muse Masters

'Muse Masters', a nationwide bilingual poetry competition with an emphasis on performance poetry, is back for its second season this March.
Organised by British Council and Monsoon Letters, the competition first started out in early 2014 to encourage performance poetry in Bangladesh. Aiming to be bigger and better this time around, the organisers have decided to also make room for poets who may be too shy to perform on stage.
Interested participants can now submit in either of two categories – written poetry and performance poetry. The deadline for submissions is on February 22, and anyone between the ages of 18 and 35 is eligible to apply in both Bangla and English.
The structure of the competition invites the top 10 participants from each category to participate in a workshop conducted by a leading performance poet from the UK. The finalists are then invited to perform/present their work one last time in a final round before the winners are selected by the judges.
The final judges of Muse Masters Season 1 (2014) were Eeshita Azad, Head of Arts, British Council Bangladesh; Kaiser Haq, notable Bangladeshi bilingual poet and academician; and Rubana Huq, Editor of Monsoon Letters.
And while all of this is very exciting for aspiring poets, the question that remains with us is “What is performance poetry really?”
Is it simply poetry performed like we have traditionally indulged in Bengali abritti? Is it theatre? Does it have its own rules? How is it any different from 'normal' poetry?

Eeshita Azad, who is also a poet herself, says, “As a poet, I feel performance poetry can be anything, but as long as the poet writing the poem thinks about his or her audience first. As opposed to any other form of poetry, performance poetry happens because of the poet's own need to get the poem out of the heart/head and onto the paper!”
The British Council has been working with its collective of poets rounded up from the last season of Muse Masters and previous other poetry projects towards developing the genre of performance poetry in Bangladesh. Last season's final performances saw participants perform with props, musical instruments and even lighting.
In an attempt to hone the performance skills of veteran participants and poets in its network, British Council has been continuously training them via workshops and opportunities. Sabrina Mahfouz, British playwright and performance poet, conducted a workshop for older participants during her visit to Bangladesh for her performance at Hay Fest Dhaka 2014. Other performance poetry workshops organised by the British Council have been facilitated by British poets Innua Ellams and Ross Sutherland. For this season, the older participants can be heard on Radio Shadhin 92.4 FM, performing minute-long snippets everyday leading up to the competition.
Azad says that this not only gives the older poets an opportunity to keep practicing their art and take it seriously, but also gives new and aspiring poets a better understanding of all the doors performance poetry can open for them. She expects Bangladeshi performance poets to lead the genre soon and facilitate the art for newer generations of performance poets too.
Find out more about the competition at http://www.britishcouncil.org.bd/