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Author: Usha Akella

Usha Akella is the Poetry editor of the Lucy Writers’ Platform. She earned an MSt. in Creative Writing from Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge, in 2018. She has authored four books of poetry, one chapbook and scripted/ produced one musical drama. Her most recent poetry collection is due for publication from Sahitya Akademi, India’s highest literary authority. Usha’s work has been included in the Harper Collins Anthology of Indian English Poets; she was selected as a Cultural Ambassador for the City of Austin in 2015, and has read with a group of eminent South Asian Diaspora poets at the House of Lords in 2016. Usha’s work is published widely and she is often invited to international poetry festivals in Trois Riviere, Slovakia, Nicaragua, Macedonia, Colombia, Slovenia, India etc. She is the founder of ‘Matwaala’, the first South Asian Diaspora Poets Festival in the US. She has won literary prizes and enjoys writing quixotic prose articles and interviewing poets and artists. She is the founder of the Poetry Caravan in New York and Austin which has offered several hundreds of poetry readings to those in women’s shelters, senior homes and hospitals. In response the City of Austin proclaimed January 7th as Poetry Caravan Day. To contact Usha and find out about the Matwaala Festival, contact her via this address: reachmatwaala@gmail.com

‘This is Lime, this is Gul Mohar, this is Mountain laurel’ by Usha Akella

12th May 202022nd May 2020  Usha Akella

Our Poetry editor, Usha Akella, recalls her time studying for an MSt. in Creative Writing at Cambridge and considers how the flora and fauna of the city inspired her writing and helped her navigate and connect with a new place.

Read More “‘This is Lime, this is Gul Mohar, this is Mountain laurel’ by Usha Akella”
Posted in Creative Writing, Environment, Lucy Features, My Cambridge, PoetryTagged: Byron, Cambridge, Daffodils, Dev Patel, Flora & Fauna of Foreign Places, Lime Trees, Lucy Cavendish College, Madingley Hall, Poetry, Ramanujam, Romantic Poets, Usha Akella, Wordsworth

Matwaala: Intoxicated by Poetry and to Intoxicate with Poetry

30th December 201830th December 2018  Usha Akella

Poet and Lucy Writers’ Poetry editor, Usha Akella, writes of the South Asian Diaspora Poets’ Collective festival, Matwaala, which she founded several years ago.

Read More “Matwaala: Intoxicated by Poetry and to Intoxicate with Poetry”
Posted in Arts, Books, Creative Writing, PoetryTagged: Amritjit Singh, Austin, Gandhi, Matwaala, Muse India, Poetry, South Asian Diaspora Poets' Collective, South Asian Poets, The Poetry Caravan, Usha Akella
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