The Tagore Centre UK

Posts

Posts

Posts

Welcome to a world of limitless possibilities, where the journey is as exhilarating as the destination, and where every moment is an opportunity to make your mark.

  • Words II, Listening II, Waiting II

    By Nuala Dalton Hello. This is my final blog entry as I end my project. It has been a period of focus on receptivity rather than activity, listening, waiting and allowing time. In keeping with my intentions for this area, rather than writing a long essay, which I could easily do, I share a few…

  • Dwarkanath Tagore Lecture presented by Mr Sumit Mitra

    The Tagore Centre UK is pleased to present the full transcript and photographs from the centre’s extremely successful event on 2nd August, which featured a captivating talk on Dwarkanath Tagore, the grandfather of Rabindranath Tagore, presented by Mr Sumit Mitra to a packed Centre. We were also delighted to have Professor Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya Kt.…

  • Mindful Education

    Nuala Dalton is one of the researchers who has been working with the Tagore Centre UK for several months. She has been focusing particularly on Tagore’s ideas on education and has been applying them to her own experience as a schoolteacher. Here she outlines some of the concerns she has been grappling with and reflects on the…

  • Words, Listening, Waiting

    Here are three new pieces of writing by one of the Tagore Centre resident artists, Nuala Dalton. Her empathetic responses to Tagore might give clues to our own creative practice.        

  • The Art of Writing

    A new piece by Aurogeeta Das is in our Features section. A lovely account of the joys of handwriting. Forming Letters, Writing Poems

  • Dancing around Tagore

    By Fiona Harvey 18th September 2014 As I sit down to write this next part of my exploration, I am distracted by the thought that it is Referendum Day in Scotland. Will we live in a different country tomorrow ? And it reminds me of all the many separations and mergings of nations in other parts…

  • The Many Meanings of Tagore’s Bird Leitmotif

    by Aurogeeta Das In the second part of my exploration of Tagore’s birds, I would like to first pick up some of the recurring themes that I saw emerging in his poetry, for example the ephemerality of life as hinted at in the following verse from Stray Birds: I. Stray birds of summer come to my…

  • Tagore’s Birds

    We are happy to present a new contribution from Aurogeeta Das which is now available in our Features section. It picks out a few words and images of birds in Tagore’s work. Tagore’s Birds: Of Word and Image, Song and Silence Let this whet your appetite for Aurogeeta’s presentation at the Tagore Centre this Sunday, September 14th 2014.…

  • What Constitutes a Bird Form?

    Aurogeeta Das As I’ve stated in my previous blogpost, Tagore’s birds tend to be fantastical rather than real; sometimes they are even chimeric (chimera: a composite of the physical attributes of two or more kinds of animals, mythical beasts, and often humans). So what constitutes the bird form? The simple answer seems to be its…

  • Encountering Birds During My Travels

    by Aurogeeta Das   For the most part, Tagore did not paint real birds. Although he may have done so occasionally (and this would be conjecture on the part of scholars and viewers since to my knowledge, Tagore did not title his works), it might be reasonable to assume that the real birds he saw…

  • Walking the Tightrope

    Tagore’s Negotiation of Identity and Image by Aurogeeta Das  This post highlights some key points in Rustom Bharucha’s lecture at InIVA London on the relationship between the Indian Nobel Laureate in Literature Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) and the Japanese curator Okakura Tenshin (born Okakura Kakuzō, 1862-1913). A video of that talk in its entirety is available here.…

  • Tagore the Deep Ecologist

    Much has been made of Tagore as an ecological poet or a poet of nature. However his vision was far from one-dimensional. In a new article on our Features page Chris Marsh sketches some connections between Tagore and 21st Century movements. Here is an overview which will lead into a series of pieces from her on Tagore’s anticipation…

  • Responding to the Archive – Aurogeeta Das

    Here is the first in what will be a regular series of posts by people working at the Tagore Centre, who will delve into the archive, share their findings and create new responses. Here the writer and artist Aurogeeta Das explains her motivations as she approaches Tagore’s work.         When I first heard…

  • Behind the Beard

    Here’s another contribution to our Features section. A short extract from Sahitya Akademi’s 1961 publication on Tagore. It follows on nicely from Matthew Pritchard’s piece on interpreting Tagore for the West. Artists create with painstaking labour but have little control over how they or their works are perceived. The further the work travels, the more…

  • A New Approach to Tagore’s Music

    I’m delighted to introduce the first offering in our new Features section. This part of the site will grow into an online exhibition and discussion forum and this first piece, by Matthew Pritchard, serves perfectly as a provocation and a keynote. Tagore’s reception in the West has often been hampered by stylistic misunderstandings. His words and music are…

  • Between the Lines

    Welcome to a new look for the Tagore Centre website! With the help of the Heritage Lottery Fund we are now embarking on a new programme of work called Between the Lines. Between the Lines aims to help people from all walks of life become familiar with Tagore’s work. Over the course of this project…