Melanie Silgardo (born 1956) is an Indian poet and editor of Goan origin who currently lives in London.
Raised by Goan Catholics parents in Bombay, Maharashtra she studied under Eunice de Souza and became one of India's major English-language poets in the 1970s. With fellow poets Santan Rodrigues and Raul D' Gama Rose, she established the Newground cooperative which published their works. While studying in London, she published Skies of Design in 1985, which won the Asian Section of the Best First Book Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Until the mid-1990s, she worked at the feminist Virago Press before turning to creative writing and teaching. [1] [2] [3]
Born in 1956 in Bombay, she studied English at the city's St. Xavier's College, graduating in 1976. She went on to earn an M.A. in English literature from the University of Mumbai in 1978. [1]
Her early works were published in Three Poets – Melanie Silgardo, Santan Rodrigues, Raul d’ Gama Rose (1978). [3] In 1985, while studying at the London College of Printing, she published a second collection of poems, Skies of Design, which won the Asian award under the Best First Book Commonwealth Poetry Prize. [1] [4] From the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, she worked as commissioning editor for the feminist Virago Press where she consulted with clients of colour and developed a large collection of Arab women's contributions to English-language writing in Opening the Gates (1980). In 2012, together with de Souza, she edited anthology These My Words: the Penguin Book of Indian Poetry. Although she has not published any further poetry, she is still considered to have played an important role in support of women's poetry, not only for her own work but for the interest she has devoted to women's writing. [2]
While Silgardo follows in the footsteps of Eunice De Souza, her poems are far more violent, as can be seen in her poem "Bombay", attacking the development of the city. [5] [6] De Souza herself finds that Silgardo's poems are "deeply emotional but never mawkish". [7] [8]
Grace Nichols FRSL is a Guyanese poet who moved to Britain in 1977, before which she worked as a teacher and journalist in Guyana. Her first collection, I is a Long-Memoried Woman (1983), won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. In December 2021, she was announced as winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.
Eunice de Souza was an Indian English language poet, literary critic and novelist. Among her notable books of poetry are Women in Dutch painting (1988), Ways of Belonging (1990), Nine Indian Women Poets (1997), These My Words (2012), and Learn From The Almond Leaf (2016). She published two novels, Dangerlok (2001), and Dev & SImran (2003), and was also the editor of a number of anthologies on poetry, folktales, and literary criticism.
Gillian Allnutt is an English poet, author of 9 collections and recipient of several prizes including the 2016 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.
Ann Sansom is a British poet and writing tutor. She has written two full length collections of poetry and her work has appeared in anthologies, newspapers and magazines around the world. She is currently a regular tutor for the Workers' Educational Association, Poetry Society and Arvon Foundation; and has taught at Sheffield Hallam University, University of Leeds, University of Exeter and University of Oxford. As well as giving hundreds of readings and workshops in the UK over the last two decades, Ann has also read and taught in India, Finland and Greece.
Leela Gandhi is an Indian-born literary and cultural theorist who is noted for her work in postcolonial theory. She is currently the John Hawkes Professor of Humanities and English and director of the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women at Brown University.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is an Indian poet, anthologist, literary critic and translator.
Hemant Divate is a Marathi poet, editor, translator and publisher based in Mumbai.
Arundhathi Subramaniam is an Indian poet and author, who has written about culture and spirituality.
Cate Parish is an American poet.
Jeet Thayil is an Indian poet, novelist, librettist and musician. He is the author of several poetry collections, including These Errors Are Correct (2008), which won the Sahitya Akademi Award. His first novel, Narcopolis, (2012), won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize and The Hindu Literary Prize.
Goa is India's smallest state on the west coast, and its writers have written in many diverse languages. Poetry is a small and scattered field in the region, and this page makes an attempt to acknowledge those who have contributed to the field. It includes those listed below who have contributed to poetry in and from Goa, as well as those writing poetry in Goa. Poetry related to Goa is known to have been written in Konkani, in Portuguese, English and Marathi, apart from other regional, national and international languages to a lesser extent.
Joseph Furtado was an early South Asian poet and novelist who wrote in the English language. He has been praised as 'one of Goa’s best poets', albeit now 'in the shadows, pushed to the margins and somewhat forgotten'.
Rochelle Potkar is an Indian fiction writer and poet based in Mumbai, India. Her work includes the short story collections The Arithmetic of Breasts and Other Stories and Bombay Hangovers, as well as the poetry collections Four Degrees of Separation and Paper Asylum.
Manohar Shetty is a Goa-based poet considered one of the prominent Indian poets writing in the English language.
Santan Rodrigues was a Bombay (Mumbai)-based poet writing in English. He is rated as one of the prominent poets who has written in the language from Western India.
Bombay Poets was one of the founding school of poets of Indian English literature of the post-independence era, consisting of both prose and verse. It was located in the geographical located in Bombay. Several members of the same are credited with redefining Indian English poetry as well as the perception of Indian poets abroad. The school began in the 1960s with prominent names like Nissim Ezekiel, R. Parthasarathy, Dom Moraes, Adil Jussawalla and many more gathering at Kala Ghoda where they would all sit and discuss about literature, present their own works & critically analyse others work. Due to their international acclaim, they have also performed their works at cultural capitals like Soho, New York, and many more of such places. Their selected works have also been achieved at the Cornell University Library.
Jyotsna Milan was an Indian novelist, short story writer, poet and editor. She published two novels, several short story collections and two collections of poetry, and wrote in both Gujarati and Hindi.