Ezhuthachan Puraskaram — the top literary prize of the State government — for 2017 has been given to poet-critic K. Satchidanandan.
The award was announced here on Wednesday by Culture Minister A.K. Balan. Satchidanandan was chosen by a committee chaired by Kerala Sahithya Akademi president Vaishakhan. The award carries a cash prize of ₹5 lakh and would be given away at a date to be finalised later.
Many roles
Born in 1946 at Pulloot, a village in Kodungalloor in Thrissur district, Koyamparambath Satchidanandan did his early schooling in a local village school. Later he studied Biology at Christ College, Irinjalakuda, and had his postgraduation in English literature from Maharaja’s College, Ernakulam. Later, he obtained his doctoral degree in post-structuralist poetry from the University of Calicut.
He had a brief stint as a lecturer at a government college at Puloot in 1968 and then at Christ College, Irinjalakuda, from 1970 to 1992 before taking up the editorship of the Indian National Academy’s journal ‘Indian Literature’ in 1992. He retired from the academy in 2006.
Later he served as a consultant to the Indian government’s Department of Higher Education and to the National Translation Mission. He has also served as director of the School of Translation studies at IGNOU. He has also edited the ‘Katha Library of Indian Literature,’ ‘The Library of South Asian Literature,’ ‘Beyond Borders,’ a journal of South Asian literature, ‘Jwala’, ‘Utharam’ and ‘Pachakkuthira”.
Satchidanandan has won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi award seven times beginning 1984.
It was with the publication of Kurukshetram , a collection of essays on poetry, and Anchu Sooryan, a collection of poems, that Satchidanandan burst on to the literary scene. Fifty years and numerous awards later, he has 32 books of poems to his credit in 18 languages.
In 2006, he was given the Knighthood of the Order of Merit by the Italian government and Indo-Polish Friendship Medal by the Government of Poland in 2005. In 2011, Satchidanandan was in the Ladbroke list of Nobel probables.
Satchidanandan is also a national fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla.
