Shankha Ghosh selected for India’s highest lit award
Noted Bengali poet Shankha Ghosh has been selected for the highest literary honour in India, the 2016 Jnanpith Award.
Eminent Bangla poet #ShankhaGhosh selected for 52nd #JnanpithAward. pic.twitter.com/fSEtI62GVf
— All India Radio News (@airnewsalerts) December 23, 2016
The decision was taken at a meeting of the Jnanpith Selection Board chaired by scholar, writer and critic Namwar Singh in New Delhi on Friday.
Born in 1932 in Chandpur, Ghosh is considered to be a stalwart in modern Bengali literature.
A graduate in Bengali literature from Kolkata's Presidency College, Ghosh began his career as a teacher, first at the Calcutta University and later at Jadavpur and Viswa Bharati University.
The 84-year-old author was conferred the Padma Bhushan in 2011 and the Sahitya Academi award in 1999.
While choosing Ghosh for the 52nd Jnanpith Award, the selection board noted that his "poetic idiom and experiments with various poetic forms mark his greatness as a creative talent."
The board observed that Ghosh's poetry have remained "free from polemics".
"Ghosh is a poet with an eye to the social milieu and his poems record both his time and space in a rare poetic style," the award panel noted.
"Adim Lata - Gulmomay, Murkho Baro, Samajik Noy, Baborer Prarthana are among those creations which have inspired a whole generation of modern poetry due to their unique form and feeling," the panel said admiring his unique "lyrical and reflective" style that portrayed a deep "sense of anguish towards the superficiality of our society and existence".
Ghosh becomes the seventh Bengali author to win India's highest literary award after the likes of Mahasweta Devi, Tarashankar Bandopadhyay, Ashapurna Devi, Subhash Mukhopadhyay and Bishnu Dey.
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