The collective, founded by four poets from across the country, brings together anti-caste and Ambedkarite poetry, storytelling, music and live performance. Recalling the journey, co-founder Daniel Sukumar from Bengaluru says the idea had been in the works for years before it eventually became a show in August last year. “We have been writing poetry since the early 2010s online. And we have always wanted to take our work and our stories to a wider audience,” says Daniel Sukumar. “It is primarily in English because it is a link language that has a wider reach. Dalit poetry has been written in all regional languages, be it Marathi, Tamil or Gujarati. We wanted to bring it into English,” he adds.

The other founders include Aleena, a Kerala-based poet and writer; Abhijit Shahaji Khandkar, a Mumbai-based medical pathologist and Ambedkarite Buddhist poet; and Gautam Vegda, an anti-caste poet and scholar from Gujarat.

The choice of poetry as their medium comes down to two things: the limited time people have in a society like ours and the need to keep oral traditions alive. “Poetry comes naturally to us and it is also a snapshot in time. It becomes a time-friendly medium in a world that’s running short of time,” says Abhijit. While some forms of work might require more time, not everyone has the luxury of it, he adds. “Also, oral traditions have always been part of Dalit literature and the Ambedkarite movement as well. This is perhaps an extension of that,” says Daniel.

The collective has also been looking for more patrons and performers to join them. They say that, often, having Dalit poets in art spaces can become an exercise in tokenism. They want to break away from that notion by bringing in and nurturing poets who are not yet well established. “Every time we go to a new city, we bring a new poet who writes in the regional language,” Daniel explains. One of the collective’s missions is to foreground newer poets and give them a platform to share their anti-caste poetry.