Translator: Gopikrishnan Kottoor
Pages: 34
Year of Publication: 2024 (Revised edition)
Price: Rs 150
ISBN: 978-81-979136-7-9 (9788197913679)
 
About the Translator
An established voice in Indian poetry in English, Gopikrishnan Kottoor has won major national and international prizes such as the All India Poetry Prize, Wingword Poetry Award and Chandigarh Literary Festival Prize, and has appeared in leading poetry journals in India and abroad, among them Contemporary Indian Poetry (Bloodaxe), Talk of the Town (Penguin), Lie of the Land (Sahitya Akademi), Year Book of Indian Poetry, and Best Asian Poetry. His poem sequence Father, Wake Us in Passing won a Poetry Residency at the University of Augsburg, Germany, and was translated into German. His oeuvre includes plays on the final days of John Keats and the lives of Subramania Bharati and Saint Devasahayam. His novel A Bridge Over Karma is being reissued as Karma River in Malayalam. Among his translations into English is Changampuzha’s Ramanan (Kerala Sahitya Akademi). Anthologies edited by him include English Poetry from Kerala: Seven Contemporary Poets and What Else Is Rain? He founded the little magazine for English poetry, Poetry Chain. Three new poetry collections by him and the novel Basundhara are forthcoming. He lives in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.
 
About the Book
In his introduction to the book, Gopikrishnan Kottoor writes:
“In the heart of every Hindu and among the sacred texts in the temple-rooms of Hindu households in Kerala, the Jnānappānā of Pūntānam finds a place beside the Bhagavad Gitā. Pūntānam (c. 1547-1640) is the favourite Bhakti poet-philosopher of Kerala. The popularity of Jnānappānā, which contains the essence of the Vedas and Upanishads rendered in humble vein, has endured the test of the centuries. The poem sequence is indeed a coveted publication with print runs of thousands of copies sold year after year.
…I am humbly thankful to the Lotus-eyed Lord of Guruvayur for letting the thought occur to my mind that I should attempt a transcreation of this priceless work. Jnānappānā is indeed the gift the Eternal One has bounteously bestowed upon his devotee for as long as the earth exists. There is nothing more that a poet devoted to his Lord could ask for, than for his composition to be read and sung everywhere, every time, and have a place forever along with and always close beside the Eternal One Himself.”
 
Extract
In the beginning, this abyss of infinity
Was the form of the One Glorious Divine;
Nothing was bound to It,
It bound itself to nothing,
To those that thought It this or that,
It was the revelation of oneness of all;
To others who tamed not their minds,
It became void of all meaning;
Of that which is there of a kind,
And never again,
In such wholesomeness of One
He filled life-force, and sans element,
Created the Universe that still contains the three.