Re: [GoaWriters2] Visiting Iowa and searching for the Nazareths

[Sonia Gomes]

Hello Rochelle, your session with Heta was really very good and fun too. Hope you have a wonderful time in the US. Best wishes
Sonia

On Sun, 16 Jun, 2024, 6:15 pm Rochelle Potkar, <rochell...@gmail.com> wrote:

My book tour in Goa with my latest poetry book 'Coins in Rivers' was so encouraging and warm. 

Thank you Heta Pandit, Pragya Bhagat, and Nicole Suares for being in conversation and engaging so deeply with the book. 

Also, to fellow writers who sent messages or attended in person. It was wonderful to meet Manohar Shetty and Devika Sequeira too. Signed copies of the book are at each of these lovely bookstores: The Dogear's Bookshop; Champaca; and Broadway. Thank you Leonard, Khalil, and Hari. I also thank Bharati Pawaskar (Brand Goa), Christine Machado (Navhind Times), Govind Potekar (O Herald) for the coverage.

Past the rivers and seas of Goa, I sped to Iowa, USA for my assignment: Teaching creative writing (for the fourth time) to international students for the Between The Lines summer program. 

And here I took a trip down memory lane.

2015.
When I was first selected for the International Writing Program, Peter and Mary Nazareth made it home in a very special Goan way. The home-away-from-homewala feeling. 

Like Selma does in London.

Peter was particular that I mention enough of Goan writers and poets in my class presentation on Indian Literature which was in any way an exhaustive list from its past, present, and future.
But I introduced a lot more Goan writers and poets then on via my creative-writing workshops in compulsory or optional readings.

This year teaching haiku, haibun, free verse, short fiction, flash fiction, and screenplay is proving to be fun, yet I miss the Nazareths. Peter, who would inexhaustibly speak of Elvis Presley in his lectures and casual conversations. Mary, who remembered every IWP fellow along with their whole names, traits, and happenstances.
They have left Iowa to stay closer to their children and grandchildren in another part of USA, but Iowa remembers them with each visiting scholar and fellow I come across from yesteryears.

Visiting them was always on my list when visiting Iowa. 

But this year I will just write this down and share it here. There seems nowhere else to place these thoughts.

Of my Goan hangovers in Iowa!

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[Rochelle Potkar]