SAPNE: A South Asian Poets’ group of New England presented ‘Garland of Poetry-A Festival of Creative Compositions’ on Aug 13, 2016 from 2pm to 4:30pm at the Lexington Community Center, Lexington, MA. The organizers of the event namely Sanjeev Tripathi, Sunayana Kachroo, Chandu Shah and Bijoy Mira try to find and encourage the voices of south Asia in New England area. They invited original poems in all languages and put them together into a beautiful garland.

The seed of SAPNE was sprouted in 1997 when India Poetry Reading event was organized at Harvard University by the Professor & Chair Leonard van de Kuijp, Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of India's independence. With its continuous efforts SAPNE as an organization plans its meetings by the volunteers. Since the summer of 2015, the meetings are sponsored by India Discovery Center (IDC) Inc., the Boston-area non-profit group engaged in creating an educational and cultural platform for the future generations of immigrant children. SAPNE meets quarterly in Winter, Summer, Spring and Fall.  Its spring meetings are hosted as the Annual Meetings together with India Poetry Reading held every year at Harvard University since 1997.

Shri. Bijoy Misra mentioned in his introductory remarks that we are achieving the goal of the SAPNE and glad to see its growth over the years into a big tree with its matured and new, talented and creative poets, composers of Gazals, devotional and non-devotional songs and Shayari. South Asians have maintained a commercial and intellectual connection with the New England since the first immigrant who arrived in 1789. More than two hundred thousand South Asians have made New England as their home and participating as professionals in academy, industry and business. Prof. Jaspal Singh Ji, the evergreen conductor of poetry recitation sessions welcomed and thanked profusely all the poets, distinguished guest, and audience for their time and participation. Several well-known poets of New England presented their beautiful poems and expressed their natural human emotion in their different languages. SAPNE is grateful to Lexington Community Center for having lent their space for the meeting.

Neena Wahi, one of the participants expressed, “Thanks to SAPNE for hosting such meetings and brining all poets of this area together on one flat form and proving them with a rare opportunity to share and learn and enrich their creativity”

|