Kul Rajiv Pant Unveils Poetry Collection in Shimla

Shimla (July 21):

The esteemed poet Kul Rajiv Pant’s first poetry collection, “Prithvi Kitabein Nahin Padhti” , was launched today at the Gaiety Conference Hall in Shimla. The event was organized by the well-known literary organization, Kikli Trust. The ceremony saw the presence of senior poet and critic Professor Kumar Krishna as the chief guest, while retired IAS officer and senior writer Srinivas Joshi presided over the event. Notable literary figures like Professor Meenakshi F. Paul, Dr. Vidyanidhi Chhabra, and Atma Ranjan delivered key addresses on the book.

Srinivas Joshi highlighted the excellence of Pant’s short poems, praising them as some of the finest. Professor Kumar Krishna reminisced about the poet’s long creative journey, stating that these poems encapsulate decades of creative experience and emotion. He particularly lauded the poem “Badal” (Cloud) as one of the best love poems written in recent years. Meenakshi F. Paul, through quotations from world poetry, emphasized the ecological and environmental concerns present in Pant’s poems. Atma Ranjan described the poems as remarkable in their narrative and presentation, addressing contemporary issues of water, forests, and land, and praised their encapsulation of memory, reality, and dreams in support of humanity.

The event was adeptly conducted by poet and critic Dr. Satyanarayan Snehi. The ceremony was attended by around seventy writers and cultural enthusiasts from Shimla and other regions, including Sudarshan Vashishth, Satish Ratna, Gupteshwar Nath Upadhyay, Devendra Dhar, Sumit Raj Vashisht, Mohan Sahil, Dinesh Sharma, Kul Rakesh Pant, Indra Thakur, Bhup Singh Ranjan, Om Prakash Sharma, Vinod Bhardwaj, Sanjay Sharma, Manmohan Singh, Ratnachand Nirjhar, Roshan Jaswal, Dr. Narendra Sharma, Naresh Deyog, Jagdish Bali, Kaumudi Dhal, Radha Singh, Garima, Priyanka Bhardwaj, Lokesh Uniyal, Prachi Pant, Gulpal Verma, Sitaram Sharma, Dr. Dinesh Datt Sharma, S.R. Ranjan, Ashwani Kumar, Indu Parihar, Satish Kumar, Archana Pant, Chandrashekhar Sharma, Narendra Narayan Sharma, Vinod Amar, Abhi, Hemanand, Dinesh Sharma, and Kundan Sharma, among others.

Kul Rajiv Pant, who retired as a librarian from Himachal Pradesh University, has been active in poetry writing for nearly four decades. His poems have been published in various prestigious journals and magazines. However, this is his first collection to be published in book form, released by Publication Institute Delhi.