Summers of Childhood: Poems of Heat, Heart and Home 🌞
A nostalgic collaboration by Paper Boat x The Alipore Post
Dearest reader,
Summer has come and gone, and as the monsoons take over with their gentle downpours and puddled streets, we find ourselves returning, just for a moment, to the Summers of Childhood.
We invite you to join us on a nostalgia-soaked walk down memory lane, revisiting golden afternoons and mango-stained memories through the verses of the Paper Boat x The Alipore Post Poetry Open Call. These poems are sunlit, joy-filled reminders of the wonder and slowness that childhood summers once offered us so freely.
A heartfelt thank you to all the poets who rekindled these tender moments, and to Abhilash for his wonderful illustrations that brought each theme to life.
♥️🌼 Childhood Nostalgia ♥️🌼
A collection of poems that bottle the golden, unhurried light of childhood summers, a season when time slowed and joy was always within reach.
Featuring: Swayamprava Das Biswas, Barkha Shah, Athira Mohan, Devansh Bohare, Pooja Gangakhedkar, Shreya Tilak, Ananya Biswas, Sneha Hegde, Afifa Shoket Kohli, Renjini Rajagopalan
🍃🐝 Nature Poems 🍃🐝
Let these words carry you back to leafy backyards, sun-drenched afternoons, gulmohars flaring red against soft skies, and the endless wonder of childhood summers.
Featuring: Suchi Govindarajan, Ankita Khanna, Prisha, Megha Jain, Tannu, Ilaria Kapur (Age 16), Kavya Mittal, Ritu Panwar, Jacqueline Williams, Jayshree Murali
🍉 🍧 Food Memories 🍉 🍧
Elbows sticky with mango juice, pickles drying on sunny balconies, kitchen stoves stained with tangerine memories… Here’s to the memory-keepers who have bottled the taste of Indian summers in their verses.
Featuring: Astha, Palak Oza, Scarlett Emily Scott, V Aparna Prakash, Rushali Thacker, Greeshma Gayathri, Bijoyini Ganguly, Esha Volvoikar
🍃☀️ Summer of Play 🍃☀️
From paper planes soaring high to secret forts beneath dining tables, summer was a season of infinite play. These poems are playgrounds of memory, where swings never stop and afternoons stretch on forever.
Featuring: Kriti Dhanania, Shrutika Shridhar, Deepti Puthran, Samarth Narayanan, Divya Menon, Sanjana Kothary, Vedantika Chakraborty, Ranu Jain, Sufiya Fatima, Pramod
🥭🎶 Sounds and Colours 🥭🎶
The koel’s call at dawn. The hush of seashells held to tiny ears. The crackle of a radio. Summer had a soundtrack. And a palette: ripe mango yellows, sky blues, bougainvillea pinks, and the burnt sienna of sun-baked balconies. These poems remind us how summer lives on, in sound, in colour, in memory…
Featuring: Prashasti Sharma, Shibumi Desai, Jeya Vidya Shree, Anushka Saha, Pragya Bharti, Atal Pamo, Geet Bagmar, Ranjana Gupta, Divya Kappen, Manjari Singh
🍃✍️ Summer Haiku 🍃✍️
In their quiet brevity, these haiku and haibun distill summer into a few precious words. An ode to fleeting joys, tiny wonders, and long-remembered light.
Featuring: K. Ramesh, Guntaas Kaur Uppal, Sayoni Ghosh, Harshvardhan Joshi, Jiel Narvekar, Jahnavi Gogoi, Vaishnavi, Smita V Kumar, Anwitha Sudeep, R. Suresh Babu
🌈🐚 Summer Days 🌈🐚
The taste of rain on the wind. Ice candy trickling down sticky wrists. A mother’s arms, the softest place to land. These verses invite us into the slow-blinking world of Indian summers, where every day felt like a page from a storybook.
Featuring: Pratibha, Jadav Dhiral Harshadkumar, Vasvi Kejriwal, Sanmita (Age 13), G S Manjushree, Hema Ravi, Shriyanshi Shukla, Himadri Thakkar, Aarohi Mehra, Sangeetha Menon, Swapnil Agrawal
🚣♀️🌧️ Paper Boat Poems 🚣♀️🌧️
Let’s celebrate the rain-soaked wonder of Indian summers: muddy knees, drenched dreams, and memories that still float like paper boats across time.
Featuring: Nida Sahar, Khushi Mohunta, Bratati Chatterjee, Soma Dey, Aradhana Vivian Anandan, Kavya Sharma, Parth Nikhil Roongta, Nupur Agrawal, Vaibhavi Apte, Lima
🌿💌 People, Places 🌿💌
Poems that help us step back into the warmth of grandparents’ homes, sunlit verandahs, and the gentle hush of a quiet corner, filled with kinship and the tender magic of place.
Featuring: Karuna Murthy, Nithya Mariam John, Pratiksha Salimath, Snehal Amembal, Padmakshi Rathore, Priyanka Kaushal, Preeti Prasanna Vedadri, Neeraja Srinivasan, Aparajita Roy, Dr. Nupur Parik-Pandey
☔️🌧️ Rainy Days ☔️🌧️
Frogs singing from puddles. Dark skies and thunderous applause. The scent of wet earth and hearts leaping with each lightning flash. These poems capture the monsoon magic woven through Indian childhoods.
Featuring: Rishi Benny, Svara, Raashi Bhatia, Rajlekha Chatterjee, Deepti Prakash, Venkat Raman V, Subhasish Das, Shreya Goel, Nidhi Iyer, Preeti Swaminathan
Thank you for reading, remembering, and rejoicing with us.
May we always carry these summers within us. ☀️🍃
With warmth and love,
The Alipore Post x Paper Boat