It was a sheer coincidence that the United States and Israel began their attacks on Iran just as an international poetry festival was underway in Delhi. Yet, the timing lent the gathering a distinct moral resonance. At a moment when the world seemed to slide towards an unjust war, poets from across continents assembled to read verses that spoke of grief, resistance and hope.

The three-day festival, organised by the Raza Foundation, brought together thirteen poets from ten countries. Most of them travelled to Delhi; a few joined through video messages, but distance could not dilute the urgency of their voices. Many of them came from regions scarred by war and recent upheaval. Their poems, though shaped by different languages and histories, refused to surrender their moral imagination to violence and power.

In his welcome address, the Foundation’s Managing Trustee Ashok Vajpeyi spoke of the deeply troubled times in which the festival was being held. “The trinity of conscience, courage, and creativity, the duet of hope and despair, dialogue and dissent seem to have almost their last residence in poetry,” he remarked. In an age when public discourse is often reduced to shrill polarities, Vajpeyi suggested, poetry nurtures a space for doubt, dissent and ethical reflection.

If the opening remarks set the tone, the poets lent the festival an emotional force. The Egyptian poet Yahia Lababidi recited his poems on video, wearing a keffiyeh, the scarf that has become an emblem of solidarity with the Palestinian cause. In his statement, Lababidi reflected on poetry’s enduring moral function: “In our suffering world, poetry remains a form of conscience. It reminds us of another, better world—where no one, least of all our corrupt governments, holds a monopoly on truth.”

The Iraqi poet Sinan Antoon brought a darker irony to the stage. Known for his courageous take on the long shadow cast by wars in Iraq, Antoon recited a poem that subverted a familiar biblical phrase. “In the beginning was the stab,” the poem began, replacing the Gospel’s proclamation with the vocabulary of violence.

“In the beginning was the stab/The dagger made the wound/in its own image/then went away/searching for another body.”

The stark simplicity of the verse left the audience silent. For societies ravaged by war, Antoon seemed to suggest, history begins not with creation but with the wound.

Of the several poems on Palestine, a poem, titled Limbs, carried a note: “Gaza has the largest number of amputees in the world.”

And then, Lababidi’s poem raised an unsettling question: ‘is any Israeli innocent/in a state where military/is compulsory for all/are there any citizens?'.

These poems inhabited the ruins left behind by conflict—the shattered homes, the haunted memories, the language scarred by violence.

West Asia emerged as a recurring theme, as even poets from European countries lent a voice to the unfolding tragedy in the Arab world. In a prose poem, Italian poet Andre Naffis-Sahely voiced the torment of migrants: “Only two out of ten people die in Abu Dhabi; the rest simply fail to have their visas renewed. They are bagged, tagged and placed on the next available flight back to wherever they came from.”

The readings reminded listeners that war does not merely destroy cities; it also alters the inner landscape of those who survive it.

Another voice from a land under siege came from the Ukrainian poet Kateryna Kalytko. Her poems evoked the quiet terror of daily life in a country battered by the ongoing conflict unleashed by the Russian invasion.

“I want so much to weep for her, but I have no tears left/the invisible thirsty ones drank all the moisture from my soul/through an angel’s straw.” In her poetry, war appeared as a slow erosion of ordinary life and not as the usual spectacle.

Many of the poets participating in the festival came from countries whose recent histories have been marked by turbulence—Ukraine, Iraq, Algeria, Sudan, Lithuania and Slovenia among them. Their poems carried traces of these histories: memories of exile, the ache of displacement, and the persistent search for dignity in circumstances shaped by power and violence.

Among the most moving poems of the festival perhaps belonged to the Iraqi-American poet Dunya Mikhail. It was a poem about birds that refuse to recognise the divisions humans impose upon the world:

The birds never ask

If you are going to heaven

Or hell

And they never divide the sky

Into stations.

The festival was also distinctive in the way it allowed poetry to travel across languages. Most poets read their work in their native tongues—Arabic, Ukrainian, Lithuanian or Slovenian—allowing listeners to hear the original cadence and rhythm. At the same time, the organisers had arranged for interlocutors who simultaneously read out Hindi and English translations. The effect was striking: a single poem unfolding in multiple linguistic registers, echoing and enriching the other. Poetry is rooted in a specific cultural context created by a language, yet its emotional resonance transcended the immediate boundaries.

Another distinctive feature was a conversation eminent contemporary Indian painters had with the verses of the visiting poets. Together these painters produced a striking exhibition of canvases that responded to the mood of the poems.

Migration was among the poignant themes of the festival. One poem recalled the haunting image of a Syrian child whose lifeless body was washed ashore while his family attempted to flee war and reach Europe. The image of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old refugee whose death became a global symbol of the migrant crisis, returned to the collective memory of the audience. Poetry became a form of remembrance, rescuing individual sufferings from headlines long buried.

Aptly then, Syrian poet Akram Alkatreb could see the tragedy of his country in “a pillow stained with blood”.

As the readings unfolded over three days, it became evident that the poets were not merely presenting their works. They were mapping the emotional geography of a fractured world. From Baghdad to Buenos Aires, from Khartoum to Kyiv, from Cairo to Ljubljana, their poems carried echoes of places where history was written in violence but resisted through language.

For Algerian poet Samira Nagrouche, poetry brought back a ‘certain kind of knowledge’ that ‘our damaged world needs to listen to’. And Sudanese poet K Eltinae made it clear that he wrote for those “who had to shrink themselves in order to combat oppression”.

What resonated through the festival was not a single poem or performance but a conviction that poetry matters. It may not halt the advancing armies, or prevent the falling missiles, or silence the rhetoric of power. But it preserves the capacity to imagine, to remember, and to speak truth.

What initially seemed to be a coincidence eventually came to be seen as emblematic. At a time when advanced weapons dominate headlines, a gathering in a small part of the world turned out to be a resolute counterpoint. In the space created by poetry, conscience and courage found a voice.

Ashutosh Bhardwaj is an independent writer and journalist.

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