Poet, academic and social worker Sangita Shukla meets Ari Gautier for a conversation about language, cultures, lived experiences, belonging and the spaces between two worlds – and two binders, on Melahuset Thursday, October 22.

Doors open at 5:30 PM
The conversation starts at 6:00 PM.
Free admission.

Sangita Shukla's poetry has grown out of notebooks, diaries, letters and reflections written over the past 15-20 years. She writes in Hindi, Urdu (in Devanagari script), Norwegian and English, and her work also draws inspiration from Awadhi and other linguistic impulses from her cultural heritage and life in Norway.

For Shukla, writing is both a way of remembering, a way of understanding, a source of meditation, creativity and expression: a space where language, identity and experience can meet without her having to choose between worlds. Her two debut poetry collections, Samaychakra in Hindi and Tidsspeil in Norwegian, are sister publications that spring from the same textual material, but find their own, distinct voices through their respective languages ​​and cultural landscapes. And although the poetry springs from the same life and many of the same underlying questions, the languages ​​give the poems different temperaments, textures and forms of expression. Instead of forcing experiences into one linguistic or cultural framework, poetry becomes a space where language, emotions, memories and history can exist side by side without having to choose between worlds.

Welcome to a conversation that explores poetry, roots, language, relationships, and living between different worlds and traditions.