Poetry Open Call: Summers of Childhood ✍🏽☀️

A nostalgic collaboration by Paper Boat x The Alipore Post

Dear poets and dreamers,

Today is World Poetry Day, and I’m excited to invite you to be a part of Summers of Childhood, a poetry open call that gathers nostalgia, sunshine, memories and childhood joys into words. 🌞

Paper Boat and The Alipore Post are coming together to celebrate the magic of childhood summers—the sticky fingers from melting orange bar ice creams, the sharp tang of raw mango, the lazy afternoon siestas and the scent of rain on warm earth. 🥭

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✒️ Submission Guidelines

📖 Theme:
Summers of Childhood | What did summer feel like to you as a child?

📝 Things to note:
✨ One poem per person
✨ Any format (free verse, haiku, rhyming, etc.)
✨ 20 lines or less
✨ Must be original and previously unpublished

⏳ Deadline:
April 21st, 11:59pm IST

💛 All the selected poems will be featured on Paper Boat and The Alipore Post’s social media and newsletters.

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Poetry for Inspiration

Need inspiration before you start writing? Here are some beautiful poems that capture the essence of summer’s golden days. 🌿☀️

• Haiku by SB Vadivelrajan
  summer evening —
  a crab races
  with the beach waves

• the tamarind tree by Sindhu Rajasekaran (Excerpt)

  nostalgia is sentimental
  nothing but soppy memories dripping off washed out photos –
  yet that’s what my mind seeks. to slip down memory lane
  to that old tamarind tree in Madras. to the
  molten summer, sweltering heat, sticky sweet,
  playing hide and seek, hopscotch under the tree,
  secrets kept among cousins, scraped knees
  climbing rugged branches, racing squirrels
  and collecting baskets of ripe tamarind pods.

• Quietude by Nikita Biswal (Excerpt from What Love reminds me of)

  In the summer, we used to visit my father’s coastal hometown. The first evening, my cousins and I would spend hours sitting on the terrace. Long after the conversations died, we stayed, just sitting there. Lying on my back on the roof, I first learnt to distinguish between twinkling fireflies and stars.

  
  I have found many things in the quiet. The time to listen to a favourite song over and over again. The comfort of a silence you can share in half with a friend. Sometimes I replay old memories in my head and try to remember exactly how I felt at that moment.

  
  Sitting there, still and quiet, I realise how slowly time moves. Yet so much could happen in a second. It could grow darker, I could remember something old and funny, our hands could touch. Maybe somewhere, slowly, a star could flutter, grow yellow wings and begin to move.

• A Visual Poem by Snehashis Parashar

Poem by Snehashis Parashar (@lunatic_earthling)

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We can’t wait to read your sun-drenched, memory-filled poems.

Let your words drift back to summer days gone by and bring those cherished moments to life once again.

With love and anticipation,
Rohini

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