08/09/2025
I am a strong believer that spoken word has a strong potential to alter/change the social narrative.
On that note, it was a moment of honour as I sat down with Usha Akella to speak about the amazing work she does at https://www.matwaala.com/
Usha Akella has authored six books of poetry, two chapbooks, and scripted/produced two musical dramas. She holds three Masters degrees, the most recent is an MSt in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge, UK. I will not bear you sons (2021) is published by noted feminist press Spinifex Press, Australia with a blurb by Anne Waldman. Recent readings include the Ministry of Arts and Letters, Mexico, Delhi University, and Sahitya Akademi (India’s Academy of Letters). In March 2021, she was one of four women poets to feature in a poetry event for the Mexican embassy in Delhi. She read with a group of eminent South Asian Diaspora poets at the House of Lords in June 2016. The Waiting was published by Sahitya Akademi in 2019 followed by the Mantis Editores, Mexico edition in Spanish translated by Elsa Cross. Her work has been included in the Harper Collins, India Anthology of English Poets.
She was selected as a Creative Ambassador for the City of Austin for 2019 & 2015. In 2012, Ek, the English musical on the life of Shirdi Sai Baba was scripted and produced in Austin and Houston. She is the editor of Hum Aiseich Bolte! This is just how we speak, an anthology of poetry celebrating the city of Hyderabad. Her festschrift on Keki Daruwalla was published by Sahitya Akademi in 2024.
She is the founder of Matwaala (www.matwaala.com) Matwaala is the first South Asian Diaspora Poets Festival in the US. The festival’s mission is to increase the visibility of South Asian poets in the mainstream. The 2021- ‘23 festival featured readings by poets of color: African American, Native American, Mexican, South/Central American, Asian American and Dalit poets. The project celebrates ten years in 2025.
She hosts www.the-pov.com, a curated written interview and conversation forum, and has interviewed numerous personalities in the literary, art and spiritual fields.
She was also the founder of the Poetry Caravan in New York and Austin which takes poetry readings to the disadvantaged in women’s shelters, senior homes, hospitals. Several hundreds of readings have reached these venues via this medium. The City of Austin proclaimed January 7th as Poetry Caravan Day.
She has taught creative writing workshops for Transformation Language Arts Network (TLAN), International Women’s Writers Guild (IWWG), New York Public Library (NYPL), Writers League of Texas (WLT), Logos collective, and privately from her home to adult and youth. Her students have gone on to be published by high school.
She has been published in several scores of Literary journals and anthologies world over, and her poems translated in many languages. Shas been invited to prestigious international poetry festivals in Romania, Canada, Slovakia, Nicaragua, Macedonia, Colombia, Slovenia, IACC- NYC, HLF and featured at JLF-Houston, Kolkata book fair, India etc. She has won literary prizes such as the Poetry Society of India 2019 Commendation prize, Nazim Hikmet award, Open Road Review Prize and Egan Memorial Prize and earned finalist status in a few US based contests. She has been invited as a keynote speaker to TLAN’s Power of Words conference 2019 and the Turkish Center in Austin. She’s been interviewed widely. She has written a few quixotic nonfiction prose pieces published in The Statesman, Kolkata and India Currents.
Her work ranges from feminist/activist to Spiritual and all things in-between.
Please have a listen.
