56th Facebook Poetry Meet: Poets of Balasore Extend Support to Flood Victims
Youth social worker Gobinda Dalai honored with Bipannara Bandhu Samman
Balasore, Sept 1 (Krushna Kumar Mohanty): The 56th Facebook Poetry Meet, organized by NOCCi Cultural Academy, was held at NOCCi Utkala with the theme “Flood.”
The event was dedicated to the distressed people of Bhogarai, Baliapal, and Jaleswar, who have been suffering repeated devastation due to six major floods caused by the Subarnarekha River in Balasore.
Artist Kesu Das, chief advisor of the NOCCi Cultural Academy, welcomed the guests and spoke on the theme of the meet. Presided over by Dr. Ratnakar Singh, the program had Dr. Bhagabat Prasad Das, noted researcher and literary scholar, as the chief guest. He emphasized that poets contribute significantly to the welfare of society.
On this occasion, Gobinda Ballav Dalai, head of the social organization Yuba Bikash, which has been consistently serving and supporting flood victims since 2007, was honored with the Bipannara Bandhu Samman.
The participating poets collectively raised ₹8,000 along with dry food items such as arisa pitha and mandia laddu, which were handed over to Yuba Bikash for distribution among flood victims.
The session titled “Flood” was beautifully anchored by poets Gagan Kumar Sethi and Madhusudan Mishra, while poets Shanti Bishi, Jumarnath Patra, Prabhat Acharya, Jayanta Hansaraj, Azim Baleswari, Prabhakar Sahu, Krishna Pradhan, Subrata Mohanty, Banita Sahu, Jyotsna Ray, Kalyani Nanda, Pushpalata Chakraborty, Jharana Mallik, Abanti Pradhan, Tripti Rani Patra, Debashis Singh, Mamata Das, Prabir Kumar Kamilā, Madhusudan Majhi, Ranjit Behera, and Stalin Mishra recited their self-composed poems on the theme of floods.
The cultural segment featured soulful music and dance performances by Rashmi Rekha Mahapatra, Ekadashi Barman, Atanu Das, Nandini Nayak, Rupali Singh, and Durgeswari Singh.
