Category Great Poets

               Sarojini Naidu was known as The Nightingale of India for her enchanting poems.

               She was born in 1879 to Aghore Nath Chattopadhyaya and Barada Sundari Dev. Sarojini Naidu was a prodigy. She wrote poems in English at the age of thirteen.

               Three year later, she was awarded a scholarship from the Nizam of Hyderabad which paid for her studies at King’s College in London. She continued her studies at Girton College in Cambridge. In England, she met Arthur Simon, the Nobel laureate and Edmond Gosse, the writer. Gosse advised Sarojini Naidu to write exclusively on Indian themes and she followed his instructions.

               She wrote about the life and the festivals of the people of India. Her first collection of poems was titled ‘The Golden Threshold’ and was published in 1905. Arthur Simon wrote the foreword to these poems. Gopal Krishna Gokhale and other great freedom fighters admired her poetry.

               Lyricism, symbolism, imagery and mysticism are features of her poetry. ‘The Bird of Time’, her succeeding collection, was published in 1912 in London by William Heinemann.

               Sarojini Naidu was also famous as a freedom fighter. Sarojini Naidu passed away on 2nd March, 1949. 

            Subramania Bharati was a great writer and a freedom fighter that is regarded as the father of the modern Tamil style. Known as Mahakavi Bharathiyar, which means Great Poet of Tamil, Subramania Bharati was born on December 11th, 1882. Subramania Bharati moved to Madras, present day Chennai, where he translated English into Tamil for various magazines. Later, he worked for the Tamil newspaper, Swadesamitran. He wrote essays and poems which were immensely popular at the time.

            Bharati is famous for ‘Kannan pattu’, ‘Panchali sapatham’ and ‘Kuyil pattu’.

            Many of his English works were collected in ‘Agni and Other Poems’ and ‘Translations’ and ‘Essays and Other Prose Fragments’.

            Subramania Bharati passed away on September 12th, 1921. 

            Nissim Ezekiel was an innovative Indian poet. He brought modernity to Indian poetry.

            Nissim Ezekiel is, therefore, known as ‘The Father of Post-independence Indian-English Verse’. Ezekiel himself was influenced by modern English poets.

            Nissim Ezekiel was born in Mumbai on 16th December, 1924. Moses Ezekiel, his father, was a professor of Botany at Wilson College, and his mother was principal of her own school. In 1947 Ezekiel took his BA in English Literature from Mumbai University. Then he studied philosophy at Birbeck College, London.

            ‘The Bad Day’, Ezekiel’s first book, was published in 1952. ‘The Deadly Man’, was a well known poetry collection. His other notable volumes of verse are ‘The Third’, ‘The Unfinished Man’, ‘The Exact Name’, ‘Snakeskin and Other Poems’, ‘Hymns in Darkness’, ‘Latter-Day Psalms’, and ‘Collected Poems 1952-88’.

            Nizzim Ezekiel was honoured with the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1983 for his poetry collection, ‘Latter-Day Psalms’.

            In 1988, he was awarded the Padma Shri. The poet struggled with Alzheimer’s disease in the last phase of his life.

            Nissim Ezekiel passed away in Mumbai, on 9th January, 2004. 

               Kamala Das, later named as Kamala Surayya was a fiery Indian writer. Her confessional writing invited comparisons with great writers like Sylvia Plath and Robert Lowell. Love and betrayal were recurring themes in her poems and prose.

               Kamala was born on 31st March 1934. A part of her childhood was spent in the Malabar area of Kerala. Her father worked in Kolkata, and the great city was also home to Kamala during her growing years.

               ‘Summer in Calcutta’ was her first published book of poetry. The poems in this volume were highly original, and radically different from traditional Indian verse. ‘The Descendants’ followed.’ ‘The Sirens’, ‘The Anamalai Poems’, and ‘Only the Soul Knows How to Sing’ are other well known works of Kamala Das.

               She was also a popular columnist. Kamala wrote a sensational autobiography titled ‘My Story’, at the age of 42. Originally, it was written in Malayalam as ‘Ente Katha’. However, she later confessed that the autobiography was largely fictional.

               She passed away on 31st May, 2009. Kamala Das or Kamala Surayya is known as ‘The Mother of Modern Indian English Poetry’. 

            Derek Walcott was a distinguished West Indian poet and playwright.

            He was born in Saint Lucia on January 23rd, 1930. Walcott’s first published poem was printed in The Voice of St. Lucia when the poet was fourteen years old. He later attended the University of the West Indies, having received a Colonial Development and Welfare scholarship.

            Walcott borrowed money to self publish his first collection titled ‘25 Poems’, in1948. The poet sold the book on the streets of West Indies. ‘Epitaph for the Young: XII Cantos’ followed in 1949.

            The influence of Shakespeare, Eliot and Pound can be found in these poems. Walcott made his name with the collection ‘In a Green Night: Poems 1948-1960’.

            ‘White Egrets’ ‘Selected Poems’, ‘The Prodigal’ and ‘Tiepolo’s Hound’ were some of his other famous works.

             Walcott also founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop. His play ‘Dream on Monkey Mountain’ won the Obie Award for distinguished foreign play of 1971.

            Walcott won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992. Derek Walcott breathed his last on March 17th, 2017, in Saint Lucia.

               Shel Silverstein wrote memorable poetry for young readers. Silverstein was born on September 25th, 1930 in Chicago, US. He took to writing and drawing in his childhood days.

               His collections of poetry were hugely popular. Where the ‘Side-walk Ends’ won the Michigan Young Readers Award in 1974. Silverstein went on to win the School Library Journal Best Books Award in 1982 for ‘A Light in the Attic’.

               ‘Falling Up’ and ‘Don’t Bump the Glump! and Other Fantasies’ were widely read. Silverstein penned children’s classics such as ‘Uncle Shelby’s story of Lafcadio: The Lion Who Shot Back’, ‘The Giving Tree’, ‘A Giraffe and a Half’, and ‘The Missing Piece Meets the Big O’. ‘Who Wants a Cheap Rhinoceros?’ was an early work written under the pen name, Uncle Shelby.

               His books sold more than 20 million copies, and have been read in translation in over 30 languages.

               He has also written one-act plays for children. His songs won two Grammy Awards. He was nominated for Golden Globe as well as the Academy Award. Shel Silverstein passed away on May 10th, 1999. 

          Born in England, Ted Hughes was fascinated by myths and legends. Hughes studied anthropology and archaeology at Cambridge.

          Later, Ted Hughes fell in love with Sylvia Plath, the American poetess, and married her in 1956. The newlyweds settled in England. The following year, his first poetry collection titled ‘The Hawk in the Rain’ was published. ‘Lupercal’, published in 1960, won him great critical and popular acclaim. However, Sylvia Plath committed suicide in 1963. Hughes did not publish even a single poem during the following three years.

          Later, Hughes made a comeback as a poet. ‘Wodwo’, ‘Crow’, ‘Wolf watching’, and ‘New Selected Poems’, appeared in succession. Hughes was also a children’s writer. One such work, ‘The Iron Man’, depicts scenes from his childhood. Like some of his other works, ‘The Iron Man’ was created in collaboration with photographers and artists.

          ‘Birthday Letters’, one of his famous works, narrates his difficult relationship with Sylvia Plath.

          Hughes was one of the great writers of the twentieth century, and a leading poet of his generation. He was the Poet Laureate of Britain from 1984 until his death in 1998. 

            ‘Howl’, was Allen Ginsberg’s masterpiece. ‘Howl’ was a poetic outburst against the violence and exploitation of society. This work of verse appears in ‘Howl and Other Poems’ published in 1956. A long lined poem, in the style popularized by Walt Whitman, ‘Howl’, made Ginsberg famous.

               Ginsberg was born in 1926 in New Jersey, US and grew up in Paterson. Ginsberg graduated from Columbia University. His mother, who was Russian by birth, suffered several nervous breakdowns. In ‘Kaddish’, his great confessional poem, Ginsberg re-creates the gloom caused by his mother’s illness and his relationship with her.

               ‘Empty Mirror’ and ‘Reality Sandwiches’ are important collections of his poetry. ‘The Fall of America: Poems of These States’, won him the National Book Award. ‘Collected Poems’ is an omnibus of Ginsberg’s published poetry. Ginsberg was a Buddhist who participated in non-violent protests. Ginsberg passed away in 1997.

               Philip Larkin was known as ‘England’s other poet laureate’. He was the popular and critical choice for the position when it became available in 1984. However, a publicity-shy Larkin refused the honour.

               Larkin was born on August 9th, 1922. ‘Jill’, was his first novel. The novel is based on his experiences at Oxford during his student days. He self published ‘The North Ship’, his first book of poetry. ‘The Less Deceived’, a collection of poetry, brought him fame. ‘The Whitsun Weddings’ and ‘High Windows’ are his other important works of verse.

               He was also a famous essayist. ‘Required Writing’ is his well known book of essays. Philip Larkin was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. Larkin died on 2nd December 1985.

               A memorial for Philip Larkin at Westminster Abbey reminds visitors of his contributions to post war poetry. 

          Charles Bukowski was a postman who became a man of letters.

            Bukowski was born in Germany on August 16th, 1920. He was taken to America as a two year old. He joined, and then dropped out of the Los Angeles City College.

            Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels. His first collection of poems, ‘Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail’ was published in 1960. From then on, a poetry collection of Bukowski appeared nearly every year. By 1963, Bukowski had a legion of diehard fans.

            ‘Mockingbird Wish Me Luck’, ‘Love Is a Dog from Hell’, ‘War All the Time’, and ‘You Get So Alone at Times that It Just Makes Sense’, are some of his popular poetry collections.

            Bukowski wrote several collections of short stories. ‘Notes of a Dirty Old Man’ was published in 1969. ‘Factotum’ and ‘Ham on Rye’ are among his well known novels. Bukowski’s life came to an end on March 9th, 1994. Several collections of his unpublished poetry including ‘Slouching Toward Nirvana’ and ‘The People Look Like Flowers At Last’ appeared posthumously.