Bio
Mamta Sagar is a contemporary Kannada poet and playwright living in Bangalore, in Karnataka, India. Mamta has three collections of poems, Hiige Haaleya Maile Haadu (Like this the song), Kaada Navilina Hejje (Footprints of The Wild Peacock), Nadiya Neerina Teva (Dampness of the River) & four plays, an anthology of column writing, MahiLa Vishaya (Women Subjects), A collection of Essays in Kannada and English on Gender Language Literature and Culture and a booklet on Slovenian-Kannada Literature Interactions to her credit.
The Swing of Desire, English translation of her Kannada play Mayye Bhara Manave Bhara, is included in the anthology, “Staging Resistance: Plays by Women in Translation”, Published by Oxford University Press, New Delhi. She was invited as ‘Poet in Residence’ to Belgrade, Serbia by AUROPOLIS, an Association of Multimedia Artists. Mamta has presented poems at poetry festivals in Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Colombia, Cuba, South Africa, Nicaragua, Slovenia, Serbia and Struga, Macedonia. Her poems are translated into many Indian languages including English apart from Spanish, French, Vietnamese, Galician, Maltese, Chinese, Slovenian, Serbian, Sinhalese, Russian etc and are published in those respective languages. She has collaborated/performed poetry with artists N.Pushpamala (India), Jannet and Jennifer(Australia), Marjorie Evasco(Philippines), Que Mai (Vietnam) and musicians Manja Ristic, Igor Stangliczky and Marko Jevtić (Belgrade).
Mamta has conducted theatre and poetry workshops culminating with readings and productions for women, children and people from marginalised communities. Her poems and interviews are showcased in the documentary ‘Cultures of Resistance’ by Lara Lee and in ‘Los Chicos de Mañana’, a film by Spanish director Javier Monero from Spain. Presently she teaches at the Centre for Kannada Studies, Bangalore University, Bangalore.