Manohar Shetty (born 1953) is an Indian poet, writer, and literary editor based in Goa, India. He is considered as one of the prominent Indian poets writing in the English language.
He has been a Senior Fellow with the Sahitya Akademi, the Indian academy of arts and letters, and his work is found in several anthologies, including The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets edited by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and anthologies edited by Eunice de Souza, Vilas Sarang and Jeet Thayil.
Early life Manohar Shetty was born in Bombay and educated in Panchgani."Entry for Manohar Shetty," Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English by Eugene Benson, Routledge, 2004, p. 1438. He graduated from Bombay University in 1974 and began working as a journalist.
Critical perspectives Shetty's poetry is seen as being an integral part of the "chronology of modern Indian English poetry.""The Third Generation: Melanie Silgardo and Manohar Shetty," chapter 21 of A History of Indian Poetry in English by Rosinka Chaudhuri, Cambridge University Press, 2016."The Third Generation: Melanie Silgardo and Manohar Shetty," chapter 21 of A History of Indian Poetry in English by Rosinka Chaudhuri, Cambridge University Press, 2016. His poetry is described as revelling in "the celebration of the sombre" and being filled with "sepulchral images" while their "mood is predominantly one of helplessness and lethargy."
Shetty is listed in Sudeep Sen's essay "New Indian Poetry: The 1990s Perspective", published in World Literature Today, Vol. 68, No. 2. K. Narayana Chandran of the University of Hyderabad, while reviewing Shetty's Domestic Creatures in World Literature Today, comments: "To be able to write magnificently about the little world one knows – and what passionate care all this involves – is no small gift for a poet. Manohar Shetty is an eminently gifted poet in this sense."
In another review of Shetty's A Guarded Space, in 1982 in the same journal (World Literature Today), S. Amanuddin is more critical. New Delhi-based magazine Caravan described Shetty as "something of a rarity among Indian English poets of his and preceding generations, who have tended to be rather less consistent in their output."
Poetry volumes As of 2017, he has published eight volumes of poetry. They are:
Morning Light. Delhi: Copper Coin, 2016 Personal Effects, Delhi: Copper Coin, 2015 Living Rooms, New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2014 Creatures Great and Small, Delhi: Copper Coin, 2014 Body Language, Mumbai: Poetrywala, 2012 Domestic Creatures: Poems, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994 Borrowed Time, Bombay: Praxis, 1988 A Guarded Space, Bombay: Newground, 1981
Books edited Ferry Crossing – Short Stories from Goa, New Delhi: Penguin India, 1998 Goa Travels, Being the Accounts of Travellers to Goa from the 16th to the 20th Century, New Delhi: Rupa, 2014 Special edition on English language poets of India for Poetry Wales.
Fellowships awarded Earlier, he has been a Homi Bhaba Fellow and a Senior Sahitya Akademi Fellow.
Translations, evaluation of work His work has been translated into Finnish, German, Italian, Marathi and Slovenian.
Evaluations of his work have been included in Modern Indian Poetry in English (New Delhi: OUP, 1987, 2011, Bruce King Ed.) and An Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Ed.).
His work has appeared in The Baffler (US), the London Magazine, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, Wasafiri, Chelsea (US), Rattapallax (US), Fulcrum (US), Shenandoah (US), The Common (US), New Letters (US), Helix (Australia).
Personal life He has been based in Goa since 1985. Shetty is based in Dona Paula, a suburb some seven kilometres from the state capital of Panjim (Panaji) in Goa. He has written an account of his experiences with alcohol in the book House Spirit: Drinking in India – Stories, Essays, Poems (Speaking Tiger Books).
References
External links Biographical note Why reading Manohar Shetty’s poetry is like knowing the earth all over again The strange, sensuous world of Manohar Shetty’s poetry A room of his own, Lora Tomas in Himal South Asia King, Bruce, ed. Modern Indian Poetry in English. Oxford University Press, 1987.