The US Universities offering MFA in Poetry got to be more inclusive. Here are 96 Indian English poets that deserve attention. The way Indian English poets know about poets outside the country, seldom do the poets outside India have enough awareness of poetry in India by poets writing in English.
The below list of poets are representatives of Indian English poetry. This is not an exhaustive list, and to expect one won’t be kind on my time and bandwidth. This list originally appeared in 2018 and attracted a massive response around the world. In fact, I cannot thank enough the poet Thomas Graves for introducing the works of poets on that list. Thank you.
This time, I edited the list, dropped a few names, added a few names, and ensured that your time is worth reading each of these poets. I have also excluded poets because of my bias against those who have systematically defiled the Indian poetry community and continue to erase emerging poets with all their power and might.
I have no returns to expect but to expect you all to read our Indian English poets with the same intellectual curiosity I have offered to poets worldwide. I hope you will use this list for your creative writing classes when Introducing contemporary Indian English Poetry.
MFA in Poetry Program: 96 Indian English Poets
January
Sharanya Mannivanan | Priya Sarukkai Chabria | Ravi Shankar | Harnidh Kaur | Jagari Mukherjee | Jerry Pinto | Karthika Nair | Srividya Sivakumar
February
Nandini Dhar | Rajiv Mohabir | Meena Kandaswamy | Shikha Malaviya | Sanjeev Sethi | Aekta Khubchandni | Arundhathi Subramaniam | Imtiaz Dharker
March
Shobhana Kumar | Tishani Doshi | Srishti Dutta Chowdhury | Aimee Nezhukumatathil | Ananya Chatterjee | Barnali Ray Shukla | Huzaifa Pandit | Chandramohan Sathyanathan
April
Janice Pariat | Vivek Narayanan | Mustansir Dalvi | Sachin Ketkar | Jennifer Robertson | Arvind Krishna Mehrotra | Rochelle Potkar | Gieve Patel
May
Amit Majmudar | Mosarrap Khan | Rochelle D’Silva | Arjun Rajendran | Aishwarya Iyer | Meera Nair | Gayatri Chawla | Somrita Urni Ganguly
June
Maaz Bin Bilal | Urvashi Bahuguna | Sridala Swami | Aditi Nagrath | Adil Jussawalla | Paresh Tiwari | Anjali Purohit | Easterine Kire
July
Tabish Khair | Akhil Katyal | Babitha Marina Justin | Jeet Thayil | Saima Afreen | Anupama Raju | Sujatha Mathai | Dion D’Souza
August
Rohan Chhetri | Sampurna Chattarji | Leeya Mehta | Ranjani Murali | Minal Hajratwala | Ranjit Hoskote | Uttaran Dasgupta | Dibyajyoti Sarma
September
Devashish Makhija | Mani Rao | Menka Shivdasani | Nabina Das | Smita Sahay | Preeti Vangani | K. Satchidanandan | Goirick Brahmachari
October
Hoshang Merchant | Shriram Sivaramakrishnan | K. Daruwalla | CP Surendran | Nitoo Das | Kiriti Sengupta | Ankita Shah | Anand Thakore
November
Aryanil Mukherjee | N Ravi Shanker (RaSh) | Kazim Ali | Binu Karunakaran | Linda Ashok | Sumana Roy | Aakriti Kuntal | Raghavendra Madhu
December
Amit Shankar Saha | Sohini Basak | Mrinalini Harchadrai | Shelly Bhoil | Shamayita Sen | Jayanta Mahapatra | Sufia Khatoon | Namrata Pathak
96 Indian English Poets
In the future, I’ll keep adding new names to this calendar and attempt to make it as exhaustive as possible. This will help you take a sneak peek at the works of Indian English poetry in a few minutes so that you can name-drop the Indian English poets, sound more inclusive and scholarly, and quote their voices to make your MFA in Poetry a more diverse program.
I guess that’s a list of living Indian poets. Two, how about Vivek Narayanan?
Sure. Thank you for recommending Vivek Narayanan and indeed he is worthy of mention. The list is, as you have understood, of living poets. When I revise the list the next time, I’ll definitely add his name.
Well organised.Encouraging. Wish to send poems.Details please.
Ma’am meet me anytime and I’ll name you all the names you would love to hear. Not only in English but in regional poetry including Bengali, Malayalam, Assamese, Telegu… The names you mentioned are all well celebrated but deceased and therefore do not qualify my list of living Indian Anglophone poets. As you may see, I haven’t included the name of Eunice D’Souza too, although her poetry is very contemporary.
Why not include Amit Radha Krishna Nigam?
He has three english poetry books, brilliant and new voice.