Author: P. Ravikumar
Translator: M. Dakshinamurthy
Pages: 96
Year of Publication: 2015
Price: Rs 200
ISBN:
978-93-5045-097-0 (9789350450970)
About the Author:
Born in 1952, P. Ravikumar has written two long poems and many articles. His first poem, Em Dee Rāmanāthan, appeared in 2004, and his second, Nachiketas, in 2009. The Hindi translation of Nachiketas was published in 2013. Ravikumar is also a music critic and journalist and was on the editorial board of the Keralakaumudi daily. He is now the Literary Editor of the Kalakaumudi weekly.
About the Translator:
Born in January 1944, M. Dakshinamurthy obtained his MA in English from Maharaja’s College, Ernakulam (Kerala). He writes poems and essays in English, Malayalam and Tamil and has translated from and into these languages. He won the Ulloor Award of the Thiruvananthapuram Tamil Sangham in 2008. His published works include English Kālpanikatā, a critical work in Malayalam on Romantic literary theories, and Divyadarshanam, a collection of poems in Tamil.
About the Book:
In his foreword to the book, Mahākavi Akkitham writes:
“Em Dee Rāmanāthan is an extremely notable recent poem in Malayalam. When I completed reading it, I felt I could not help writing about it. In twenty chapters, it portrays the essence of M D Rāmanāthan’s personalty, which cannot be divided simply into spiritual and physical. This poem has enabled us to experience fully the reality called M D Rāmanāthan. Such poetic experiences occur only rarely.
It can be said without any doubt that, through this extraordinary poem, P. Ravikumar has imprinted his personality on Malayalam poetry. There are some people who think that poetry is the imagery of a moment… The secret behind the making of Em Dee Rāmanāthan is design, not imagery. This is an age when people think that poetry does not need a mythology which gives it imagery and meaning. There are people who think that a poem needs no meaning. My happiness in finding an extraordinarily gifted poet like Ravikumar in such an age is indeed immeasurable. The importance becomes clear when we realize that we have had the good fortune to read this inspiring poem at a time when we fear that English may crush Malayalam out of existence.”