Poetree at Madras Café Unlocked festival

We welcome all poets and poetry lovers to get involved with Madras Café Unlocked and feature on our Poetree. We invite you to put up a video of your performance, or jpg image or word document of poetry text, of one or more poems that connect to one or more of the five current themes of Madras Café Unlocked.

• Food
• Peace
• Justice
• Climate
• Community

We have a great event website and on the homepage, you will see the festival map and where the Poetree features https://www.madrascafeunlocked.co.uk

Madras Café Unlocked came about through COVID-19 when WOMAD festival was cancelled.

Madras Café appears just once a year at WOMAD festival. It serves 4,000 customers over the weekend with fantastic Gujarati and South Indian food (that’s where the cooks come from) produced by around 100 volunteers (yes, it’s an amazing and very unusual outfit). The profits go to people-led community and agricultural projects in India that are really well known to the supporters of Action Village India www.actionvillageindia.org.uk.

So, this year’s fundraising and awareness raising event was threatened and we decided to work virtually. Madras Café and Action Village India have created our re-imagined event: Madras Café Unlocked, a summer of online content in support of Action Village India and partners on 24/25/26 July (Friday to Sunday).  Besides Poetree, we have a number of stages – Madras Boombox, Food for Thought, Partnerships and Solidarity, Jai Jagat Exhibition and Madras Café Family. There will also be a People’s Tent, a sort of Open Mic for supportive musicians, artists, performers and possibly many others!

Would you like to be part of Poetree? It’s another opportunity to perform.

Straight forward to take part, it is free, and we would like you to spread the word through your networks. We would would keep your contribution on the site for around a year or for as long as both you and Action Village India agree to.

Please share the following in an email to [email protected].

• Your name:
• Where you are from:
• An active link to a performance of poetry, or a jpg image or word document of poetry text on one or more of the themes:
• Please include any background/context/details you would like to share – to a maximum of 120 words.

Any questions, please contact me on [email protected]

– Fran Wilde, Action Village India and Madras Café Volunteer