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60 Indian Poets

60 Indian Poets

Jeet Thayil
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60 Indian Poets spans fifty-five years of Indian poetry in English, bridging continents and generations, and seeks to expand the definition of ‘Indianness’.
Beginning in 1952 with selections from Nissim Ezekiel’s first volume of poetry which was published in London, it honours the canonical writers who have come to define modern Indian poetry—influential craftsmen such as Nissim Ezekiel, Dom Moraes and Arun Kolatkar, who died within months of each other in 2004—and reinstates neglected or forgotten figures such as Lawrence Bantleman, Gopal Honnalgere, Srinivas Rayaprol and G.S. Sharat Chandra.
The collection also introduces an astonishing range of contemporary poets who live and work in various parts of the world and in India. There are writers from Bombay and Berkeley, from New Delhi and New York, from Melbourne, Montana, Aarhus, Allahabad, Hong Kong, Sheffield, Connecticut and Itanagar, among other places—writers who have never shared a stage together but have more in common than their far-flung locations would suggest. Also included in the volume is Bruce King’s elegiac essay, ‘2004: Ezekiel, Moraes, Kolatkar’, and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra’s meditation on ‘What Is an Indian Poem?’ An essential feature of 60 Indian Poets is a set of rare and remarkable portraits by Madhu Kapparath.
This definitive anthology aims for ‘verticality’ rather than chronology. Exhaustive, and stunning in its scale and vitality, it represents a community ‘separated by the sea’ and connected too—in familial ways—by the unlikely histories of a shared English language.

Imprint: India Penguin

Published: Aug/2008

ISBN: 9780143064428

Length : 432 Pages

MRP : ₹550.00

60 Indian Poets

Jeet Thayil

60 Indian Poets spans fifty-five years of Indian poetry in English, bridging continents and generations, and seeks to expand the definition of ‘Indianness’.
Beginning in 1952 with selections from Nissim Ezekiel’s first volume of poetry which was published in London, it honours the canonical writers who have come to define modern Indian poetry—influential craftsmen such as Nissim Ezekiel, Dom Moraes and Arun Kolatkar, who died within months of each other in 2004—and reinstates neglected or forgotten figures such as Lawrence Bantleman, Gopal Honnalgere, Srinivas Rayaprol and G.S. Sharat Chandra.
The collection also introduces an astonishing range of contemporary poets who live and work in various parts of the world and in India. There are writers from Bombay and Berkeley, from New Delhi and New York, from Melbourne, Montana, Aarhus, Allahabad, Hong Kong, Sheffield, Connecticut and Itanagar, among other places—writers who have never shared a stage together but have more in common than their far-flung locations would suggest. Also included in the volume is Bruce King’s elegiac essay, ‘2004: Ezekiel, Moraes, Kolatkar’, and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra’s meditation on ‘What Is an Indian Poem?’ An essential feature of 60 Indian Poets is a set of rare and remarkable portraits by Madhu Kapparath.
This definitive anthology aims for ‘verticality’ rather than chronology. Exhaustive, and stunning in its scale and vitality, it represents a community ‘separated by the sea’ and connected too—in familial ways—by the unlikely histories of a shared English language.

Buying Options
Paperback / Hardback
Ebooks

Jeet Thayil

Jeet Thayil was born into a Syrian Christian family in Kerala. As a boy he travelled through much of the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia with his father, TJS George, a writer and editor. He worked as a journalist for twenty-one years, in Bombay, Bangalore, Hong Kong and New York City. In 2005 he began to write fiction. The first instalment of his Bombay Trilogy, Narcopolis, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and became an unlikely bestseller. His book of poems These Errors Are Correct won the Sahitya Akademi Award (India's National Academy of Letters), and his musical collaborations include the opera Babur in London. His essays, poetry and short fiction have appeared in the New York Review of Books, Granta, TLS, Esquire, The London Magazine, The Guardian and Alexander, among other venues. His most recent novel is Names of the Women. He is the editor of The Penguin Book of Indian Poets.

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