Ever wondered if you could just take off on a holiday, where reading is perhaps your only activity? If literature makes your world go round, it’s time you head to the annual Alchemist Hay Festival at Kerala.
The world’s biggest literary festival, the Alchemist Hay Festival, is back in Kerala on November 17, for the second time. The festival began 24 years ago in the book town of Hay-on-Wye, a small market town and community in Powys, Wales and has only grown since to become the largest melting pot for ideas in UK and around the world. Over the last few years, the festival has grown to become a global not-for-profit venture that runs festivals worldwide. Before India, the festival reached Colombia, Mexico, Beirut, Spain, Maldives and Nairobi.
This year, the Kerala Hay festival will be held at the Kanakakunnu Palace in Thiruvananthapuram, the summer retreat of the royals of Travancore. Literally translating to mean the palace atop the golden hill, the palace with its sprawling lawns and inviting structure will blend naturally with the feel of the festival, say organisers. Lyndy Cooke, executive director of the Alchemist Hay festival, says, “Kerala has a rich tradition of literary writing and a super-high literacy rate. We had a wonderful time last year; it felt like a natural home for the Hay Festival. In Kerala, we found a great interest in poetry with every session drawing capacity crowd.”
The Hay festival is being organised in association with Teamwork Productions and British Council India.
What's in store?
To begin with, the line-up of authors, journalists, filmmakers and scientists is incredible. Among those are Jung Chang — author of Wild Swans and biographer of Chairman Mao, BBC World anchor Nik Gowing who will be chairing a debate about energy production, Oscar-winning film-maker Andrew Ruhemann, author Anita Nair, French novelist Agnes Desarthe. There will be a lecture on cosmology and codes by Simone Singh and the highlight is a speech on Shakespeare’s lovers by writer and academic Germaine Greer.
The Hay festival holds for India more than just a literary exchange. “The festival is a meeting, a market, an exchange of ideas. The amazing thing about live festivals are that they have their own buzz, their own momentum. And they are spontaneous,” says Lyndy.
The festival will also have discussions related to film-making which includes scripting, theatre and screenplay, a session on children’s literature and what makes writing for children so exciting and discussions on world literature with flavours from France, Italy, Wales and Spain.
A few must-dos include watching the screening of three documentaries — Marathon Boy, I for India and Shot In Bombay and the discussion on the earliest literary works from the Nordic, Baltic and Celtic nations. There will also be sessions on women’s literature and Dalit poetry in Malayalam. Poetry Gala, a culmination of regional literature, celebrates the long and rich history of South Indian poets.
This year, the festival hopes to set literature within a wider cultural and social context. Lyndy says, “We want to be elitist without being exclusive, to be serious without being solemn, and to be the best conversation you can ever have with new friends.”
The festival is taking place on November 17 and 19. The event is open to all.
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