The women-led Southasian diaspora organisation Matwaala celebrates its tenth anniversary this Sunday, with a Poetry Fest in collaboration with the Aseel Collective, featuring works by poets from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.
Date: Sunday, Aug 31, 2025
Time: 11:45 a.m. ET (US and Canada)
Where: Online – join Zoom Meeting id: 863 5563 1716 (Passcode: poetry)
Co-directors Usha Akella from Hyderabad, India, now in Texas, and Pramila Venkateswaran from Mumbai, now in New York, launched Matwaala in 2015 to increase the visibility of Southasian poets in America, and to create solidarity across identity groups through poetry.
Focused on building bridges through poetry, Matwaala relies on its community of poets to propel its mission forward with a mission “based on the fundamental belief that we can only flourish when we act as a collective”.
Matwaala’s reading programmes, including readings, memorial readings for senior poets, anthology and poetry book releases, and poetry installations, are funded by Poets and Writers, universities, cultural institutions and poetry lovers.
Matwaala initiatives over the past decade include:
• An Anthology of South Asian Diaspora Poets, MAPS 2019 – https://www.matwaala.com/maps.html.
• Matwaala festivals – a yearly event of readings hosted by colleges, universities and cultural institutions. Collaborations with educational institutions like NYU, Stony Brook University, Nassau Community College, Hunter College, Austin Community College, and Murray Edwards College at Cambridge University, U.K.
• Collaborations with literary and cultural institutions like Asian American Writers Workshop, ThinkIndia Foundation, Dialogue Institute, India Currents, New York Writers Workshop etc.
• Poets-of-color series – featuring readings by Dalit, Mexican, Caribbean, Asian American, African American and Native American poets.
• Poetry Wall – art installation of a poetry wall of poems by 24 South Asian Diaspora poets at Irving Museum and Archives, Dallas, curated by ThinkIndia Foundation for the Smithsonian project Beyond Bollywood.
To contact Matwaala, email: reachmatwaala@gmail.com