Copyright©Yogesh Patel & all respective copyright holders of the material published
Word Masala is launched with a dual purpose of helping the authors and wanting to showcase their work. The Diaspora writers have a huge problem finding publishers and agents. There is a general apathy against them, and deep-
It is okay to keep appearing in own community enclaves, but it is something else to achieve a breakthrough in a general market. There are no easy fixes to the problem, but it is our objective to create the conditions to facilitate a positive change.
We will be on the look out for talents that we can promote to the agents, publisher, libraries, and media. We have many plans in hand, which will shape up in future. The first volume already published I snow out of print. The second volume is just published. Please visit our store. More will be added as we progress in this Foundation.
1. Once a month we will bring you a poem featuring a selected poet from the South-
2. We will encourage the poets to provide in 50 words their own take on the poem selected to appear in our issues.
3. A reader's critique of 50 words received for the poem appearing in the previous issue will be considered to be published in the next issue with a credit and their brief bio-
4. We will also like to give a link to Poetry Films by some selected poets. We will be very grateful if you make a point to watch them. This feature is open to all Indic language poets anywhere and they are encouraged to let us have such links. Please note we WILL NOT accept a link to some other websites involved in the similar activities. YouTube, Hotmail, Google or Dropbox types of storage links or the links to own web pages are acceptable.
5. Further to the point 4, we are aiming to organize a Poetry Film festival once a year (or as possible) highlighting a small number of films from the ignored literature of the expats. This may happen at the House of Lords with the discretion of Lord Parekh and the other supporting peers. The other organizations that we will occasionally invite to help us include Gujarati Literary Academy UK, High Commission of India in London, Vatayan, Asian Voice newspapers, and Yunus Emre Turkish Cultural Centre.
6. We will aim to work in the future to establish an archive with the suitable funding authorities like the Arts Council.
7. We will like to provide a web link to the forthcoming books by our readers, so there is likely to be a list of links at the end, which is free to the authors and poets. Please let us know about your books and if possible send the copies (English, Gujarati and Hindi only). If you are a published poet or author, please let us know if you will be willing to review other colleague's books.
8. We may also include a strongly filtered strictly small selection of possible markets for you as informed to us. So if you are in publishing, please do let us know about your openings.
9. Our list includes libraries; therefore, we encourage them to explore the list of books we Foundation to put on their self to help our ignored expat authors and poets. In return, we will consider listing their events pertaining to minority literature.
10. As encouraged by Lord Bhikhu Parekh, I will like to instil a suitable award. At this stage, your views are welcome.
Writers & Poets Published:
Janice Groveas: Winner of the WM 2011 Best Story Award
Sharmila Chauhan, Uma Parameswaran, Debjani Chatterjee, Rajiv Mohabir, Meena Chopra, Daisy Abbey, Shafi U Ahmed, Malhar Patel, Divya Mathur, Shanta Acharya, Sweta Vikram, Ashoka Sen, Usha Akella, Ashini Desai, Priyanka Sacheti, Rama Shivkumar, Tara Chatterjee, Rukhsana Hasib, and Yogesh Patel
Cover Photograph:
Lord Dholakia OBE DL