The Bombay Painters & Poets Crawl

Many of the 20th century poets in Bombay were painters, and vice versa. With the Progressive Artists Group, Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA), the film industry, Progressive Writers Association and so much more thriving in the city, it wasn’t uncommon for the different communities to meet, mingle, and exchange work. During this crawl, we pay homage to artists like Gieve Patel, Gulammohammad Sheikh, Bhanu Athaiya, Dilip Chitre, amongst others, who contributed to Bombay becoming an artistic hub.

This poetry crawl is conceptualised and led by Saranya Subramanian, founder of The Bombay Poetry Crawl: an archival research space dedicated to Bombay poets who were writing in and about the city, from 1947 - 1999, in Hindi, Marathi, English, Urdu, Gujarati, Tamil, and every other recorded language.

This edition of the Bombay Painters & Poets Crawl is organised as part of the outreach programme for Sarmaya's ongoing exhibition, High Seas, Open Roads: Journeys…