Audience view: Jerry Pinto’s live poetry performance encapsulates his life of words

Author and poet Jerry Pinto opened the 2024 IHC Theatre Festival in New Delhi with a first-of-its-kind solo poetry performance. In a free-wheeling format that took in nostalgia, humour, and thoughts about the spirit and the democratic nature of poetry, Pinto took the audience on a spoken word journey of wonder, mapping the arc of his travel as a poet to the public form of poetry as an art, experience, and lived reality.

Considering poetry to be an invitation, a life force, a breath where we swallow words; a tap at the door to open to enter a shared space, Pinto began with a prayer, where the audience matched his voice note to note. An immersive presentation saw barefooted Pinto shun the stage to don the cape of an anchor, a follower, and a leader at once to break the barrier and hierarchy between the performer and the audience. Moving back and forth in the aisles and front, the poet enthralled a packed hall for moments that generously spilled over their stipulated 45 minutes.

A tribute to words

Pinto’s performance was kinaesthetic and commenced with a tribute to words and his association with them, when as a child “he wanted to wear them, pin them, eat...

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