Jaipur 9 March:Every year,the Jaipur Literature Festival celebrates poetry as one of literature’s most effective and influential art forms. The rich programme recognizes the best amongst India’s plethora of young and talented poets announcing the Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Award for Poetry. In association with the Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Foundation, the award is a tribute to Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia and his immense repertoire. The prestigious award will be presented at the 15th edition of the iconic Jaipur Literature Festival which will be held at Hotel Clarks Amer, Jaipur. In addition to a cash prize of Rs. 1 lakh, the winner receives a memento of appreciation along with a felicitation at the Festival.
Ranjit
Hoskote is this year’s winner of the 7th Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Poetry
Award 2022, following a unanimous decision by the jury committee.His poetic
tradition extends from pioneers of modern poetry in English in India like
Nissim Ezekiel, Dom Moraes, Arun Kolatkar and others, and yet makes a unique
mark of its own through finely wrought, well-chiselled wordcraft and the deft
employment of images and metaphors. His poetry is noted for the fusion of form
and content, sometimes the content determining the form.
Ranjit
Hoskote is also a cultural theorist and curator.
His six collections of poetry include Vanishing
Act, Central Time, and Jonahwhale.
His translation of a celebrated 14th-century Kashmiri woman saint’s
poetry has appeared as I, Lalla: The
Poems of Lal Ded. Hoskote curated India’s first-ever national pavilion at
the Venice Biennale, under the title ‘Everyone Agrees: It’s About to Explode’.
He has received the Sahitya Akademi
Golden Jubilee Award, the Sahitya Akademi Translation Award, and the S H
Raza Literature Award. His poems have been translated into German, Hindi,
Swedish, Spanish, and Arabic.
Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia was an
internationally acclaimed poet, freedom fighter, social reformer,
philanthropist, and environmentalist who received the Padma Shri award in 2004 and Rajasthan Ratna in 2012. Sethia Ji
authored 42 books in Hindi, Urdu, and Rajasthani, which have been translated
into English, Bengali, Marathi, Kannada, and German. He was selected as a‘Living Legend of the 20th Century’on
the occasion of the bi-centenary celebration of the US Library of Congress in
Washington. He was also awarded the Sahitya
Akademi Award for his work Lilatamsa
and the Jnanapitha Moortidevi Award in 1986.
The Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Award is
given out after a careful selection process by an eminent jury comprising
renowned litterateurs and discerning connoisseurs like Namita Gokhale, Sanjoy K. Roy, Jaiprakash Sethia,Nirupama Dutt, and Siddharth Sethia of the KL Sethia
Foundation.
On the announcement of the award, Sanjoy K.
Roy, Managing Director of Teamwork Arts,producer of the Jaipur Literature
Festival, said, “We are delighted to
present the 7th Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Award for Poetry,that recognises an
extraordinary body of work by an accomplished poet. This year, our nominees
have been numerous, each showcasing their brilliance and artistry with words,
creating magic and transporting us to a different realm. Our award-winner for
2022 is the celebrated Ranjit Hoskote, a poet who loves weaving his encounters
into tapestries, so that he can forever hide in them. Our task is to seek him
out.”
Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Poetry Award 12 March, 4pm at BOB Mughal Tent
Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia was an internationally
acclaimed poet.
Jury: Namita Gokhale, Sanjoy Roy, AJ Thomas, Sukrita Paul,Nirupama Dutt,
Siddharth Sethia
Event Moderator: Sanjoy K. Roy ,Awardee: Ranjit Hoskote,Head of Jury: Namita Gokhale, Award (will include): Cheque,Memento, Shawl, Citation
