Members of The Poet’s Club in Bhubaneswar. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, Sept. 10: Infocity is not only home to a number of IT companies, but also a breeding ground for poets.

The Poet’s Club has been functioning since 2005 on the premises of an IT giant here. Founded by a group of enthusiasts, the group has 150-odd members now. But if you consider members who have relocated to other cities, the number goes up to 450.

The club holds monthly meetings called mushaira. The meetings are not just about recitations. “There are on-the-spot theme-based poetry sessions, quiz on poets, critical analysis and other engaging activities. We also assist dramatic societies on the campus in scriptwriting,” said Chinmay Biswal, 23, an engineer.

Lately, the members have also been organising writing workshops and poetry recitation sessions at some orphanages.

The club runs an internal portal for publishing and discussing poems that can only be accessed by its members. Though newspapers and journals have published some poems of these amateur poets, members have not paid much serious thought to getting published. “We have started inviting some noted writers and publishers to our sessions, who teach us about polishing our content. We are also attending seminars by litterateurs and various literary festivals. Members may try to get their poems published as a solo work or we can do it collectively. All this is in the pipeline,” said Biswal, who closely follows the work of Saqti Mohanty, a contemporary poet.

Sidhartha Sankar Satapathy has written more than 500 poems over the past decade. He is fond of reading Robert Frost and John Keats. Inspired by romanticism, the 24-year-old software developer has been writing for various blogs. Much like Sidhartha, Smita Pati too has been writing for quite some time.

“I jot down thoughts on my smartphone and later, during leisure time, I fine-tune them,” said the budding poet, who works in retail. She writes in Hindi and Urdu and is an admirer of Ramdhari Singh “Dinkar”, Harivansh Rai Bachchan and Ahmad Faraz.

Manish Pandey, a senior consultant with an IT firm, is the mentor of the club. He teaches the budding poets the subtle difference between synonyms and corrects pronunciation.