The Kolam Writers’ Workshop is a two-week residential writing workshop held once a year at the Adishakti Theatre Complex in Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu.
Our History:
In April 2016, the three of us (Anil Menon, Akshat Nigam and Pervin Saket) had gathered for a weekend retreat and the conversation turned to the peculiar nature of writing workshops. As anyone who has ever attended one knows, writing workshops can do a great deal of good and sometimes a great deal of harm. But most often they don’t do anything at all. That’s because most writing workshops are too brief to effect any lasting change. On the other hand, an MFA is perhaps an over-commitment of time and money. Another issue with writing workshops is that the interaction with the participants ends when the workshop ends. However, writers become writers not when they produce a story or dash off a poem, but when they internalise a sense of belonging; that is, when they belong to a tradition, a community of pen-wielders. We are our club memberships, so to speak. Finally, most writing workshops aren’t affordable, and writers who could benefit from them may not be able to afford the benefit.
The three of us founded the Dum Pukht Writers’ Workshop to address these problems. Participants only pay the host institution (very affordable rates) for room and board. They are not charged for any costs associated with instructors or materials. We are now also able to offer two merit-based fellowships to writers who need financial assistance. More importantly, writers receive our attention even years after the workshop; the end of the workshop is often the beginning of a lifelong association.
Our Present:
In 2020, after four years and over fifty participants, we used the pandemic gap to mull over the writer’s role in the world and our role in the writer’s world. Our participants had published dozens of stories, won awards and begun flourishing careers in publishing, but what is that old, old saying about changing the world without changing the self? Sure, not all experience needs to be followed by change, but some experiences need to be changed. The name of the workshop, for example. We got tired of explaining how to pronounce “Dum Pukht”. (It didn’t help that the three of us pronounced it incorrectly in three different ways.) The pandemic also inspired us to move past the cooking metaphor towards something more liminal.
The ancient Tamil artform, the “kolam”, captures this liminality. Known across India and around the world by a variety of other names, the artform celebrates uncertainty, impermanence, creativity, discipline, and unboundedness. These are also the touchstones of the writing life, and hence our new name.
The Kolam Writers’ Workshop is the original workshop but in anew and improved edition. The 2023 Kolam Writers’ Workshop may be the first to carry this new name, but it is also the latest in a long line of endeavours towards perfecting the art of helping writers write.