Priyanta Islam
Daily Our Time organized the 2nd Poetry Reading Session at their Panthapath office on March 4th,2016. A number of distinguished poets as well as new and upcoming ones were invited to recite their poetry. Attending poets were Quamrul Hasan, Nahid Kaiser, Afreen Sadia, Marylin Thipthorpe, Anindya Nahar Habib, Tarannum Sattar and Md Ali Sattar. The poets enchanted the live audience with their artwork weaved by words. Also, they enlightened the audience with the motivation and backdrop behind their poetry. Nayeemul Islam Khan, Editor of Daily Our Time, was also present during the event.

Quamrul Hasan
Quamrul hasan currently works in Prothom Alo as a Senior Sub Editor. ‘SPRING MOON’ is the first ever book of English HAIKU by a Bangladeshi. Hepis Published his second book “Hyaku Haiku” this February. He is also the founder of Haiku society of Bangladesh and a senior member of ‘UNSTABLE POETS’. A poets’ group backed by the British Council. He opened the session with a brief history of his involvement with haiku. He talked about the practice of Haiku worldwide and the beauty it possesses. He then proceeded on to recite a number of Haikus of his choice from his book “Hyaku Haiku”. After a round of Haikus, he ended the session with two more poems written by him.

Nahid Kaiser
Nahid Kaiser completed her MA in English from the Department of English, University of Dhaka. At present she is teaching at Daffodil International University as an assistant professor. Her debut book of Bangla poetry was published during the recently concluded Book Fair while her maiden book of English poetry “Eve Unbound”, published from Delhi, was launched at the SAARC LIT FEST 2016. She talked about the premise of her poems in “Eve Unbound” which were her experiences as a woman. She believes that every girl goes through different phases before becoming a complete woman. She terms these phases as evanescence, puberty, maiden and mother. Also, she confided to the audience that she was forced to write her poems in English although her mother tongue is Bengali. In her words, “What I wanted to say, what I wanted to express, I could not find it in Bangla.” She recited some selected poems from “Eve Unbound”. The last poem she recited was titled “Border” which conveyed the message of universal love and humanity.

Afreen Sadia
Sadia Afreen is a student of D.U., doing her M.A in English literature. Her initial schooling was done in darjelling and she studied there for 8 years. she has been interested in English Literature since her school days. Poetry has always amused her and she took to writing at a very early age. She wrote her first poem in class six as a token of gift for her teacher. Her poems have a common premise of feminism and sufferings of women. She recited few of her poems including “My Vagina’s poke” and “Madman’s wife: Love happened, war happened.”
Tara Sattar:
Tarannum Sattar is a journalist and a poet. She addresses herself as an unpublished poet and wishes to publish her own book of poetry someday. More popularly known as Tara Sattar (her pseudonym), an accounting graduate from Oxford Brookes University, UK, she chose her path in journalism to pursue her passion in writing. She is an animal lover and has four cats named Miserable, Muffin, Toyota and Foxy. She recited her poems “Parallel Universe” and “Desert Rain”

Marilyn Thipthorpe:
She is currently in her final year at Eastern University and a recent member of the Daily Our Time team. She started the journey in the world of poems while still in school. She tried writing lyrics and then moved to writing poems. All of her poems are somewhat related to various social issues. During her performance she talked about the influence of Aparajeyo Bangladesh, a NGO she was previously a part of, in her poems.

Anindya Nahar Habib:
He is a student of Drawing and Painting Department, Department of Fine Arts, Dhaka University. He writes about his emotional experience with various people, and writes with passion from within his heart. With words of love and hate most of his poems are without names. Anindya recited five of his untitled poems during the second poetry reading session held by Daily Our Time. He is also affiliated with Siesta a subtitling firm.

Md Ali Sattar:
Mohammad Ali Sattar is a journalist, columnist and writer. He has been a news presenter and anchor both at home and abroad on TV and radio. His columns appear in national and international dailies. Since writing and recitation is his passion, he won a gold medal in literary competitions. He is an English Language trainer. And is also the founder of first ever English Language performing group called “Eternal” in 1987. Currently, he is working on his book of poetry which is expected to hit the stand next month.

The poetry reading session was organized to inspire young and upcoming poets of our country and provide them a proper platform to display their creative minds. We believe that Daily Our Time will hold these sessions at a hefty level in future, to encourage the poets and to recognize them.