K. SATCHIDANANDAN was born in May 1946 and is a major Indian poet and critic of national recognition writing in Malayalam and English.
Having done his M.A. in English Literature from the University of Kerala and his Ph.D. in Post-Structuralist Literary Theory from the University of Calicut, he worked first as Lecturer and later as Professor of English at Christ College affiliated to the University of Calicut, Kerala. After 25 years of teaching he left Kerala to join the Sahitya Akademi (National Academy of Letters) on its invitation to take up the editorship of its prestigious literary journal in English, Indian Literature in 1992. He took over as Secretary, Sahitya Akademi on 1 November, 1996, on the unanimous recommendation of a panel of seven distinguished Indian writers and scholars. He retired in 2006 and worked as a Language Policy Consultant to the Ministry of Human Resources, Govt. of India and as Consultant to The National Translation Mission. He was Chief Editor, Katha India Library, a series of contemporary Indian classics in fiction in translation, Co-Editor of Beyond Borders, a SAARC journal of culture published by the Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature, the Chief Editor of The SAARC Library of South Asian Literature, Guest-editor, Indian Literature and President, Ayyappa Paniker Foundation, Kerala. Now he is Director and Professor, School of Translation Studies and Training, Indira Gandhi National Open University, Delhi.
As a poet, Satchidanandan has been hailed by critics as a pioneer of the New Poetry in Malayalam. The publication of his first collection of poetry, Anchusooryan (Five Suns) in 1970 was a major event in Malayalam literature. Since then he has published 21 more collections of poetry, including Ivanekkoodi (Him too), Malayalam, Vikku (Stammer) , Sakshyangal (Witnesses), Anantam (Infinite) and Marannu Vecha Vastukkal ( The Mislaid Objects) besides 'Collected Poems' (1982) 'Selected Poems' (1999) and ‘Poems:1965-2005’(Three Volumes, 2006) all of which have received great critical acclaim and won different awards. Several of his poems are included in school text books and many collections have been text books at graduate and post-graduate levels in various Indian Universities and the subject of many doctoral dissertations. His poems have appeared in several national and international journals and every anthology of modern Malayalam as well as Indian poetry and many anthologies of world literature like Two Plus Two (Mylbaris, Switzerland), Voices of Conscience (London), Index to Censorship (London) , Love Poems from India ( Everyman, London) Language for a New Century (Norton, New York) and Noir Sur Blanc (Paris).
Translations of his poetry have also appeared in several reputed journals in India and abroad. He has five collections of poems in English translation, Summer Rain, How to Go to the Tao Temple, Imperfect and Other Poems, So Many Birth ,and Stammer and Other Poems all of which have been highly praised by critics in India and abroad. His new collection is about to be published by Harper-Collins. His collections have also appeared in Hindi (6), Tamil (4), Kannada, Assamese, Gujarati, Bengali, Oriya, Urdu (2), Telugu, Punjabi, French, Italian, German and Arabic. His poems have also been translated into all major Indian languages besides Swedish, Russian, Latvian, Serbo-Croatian, Vietnamese, Chinese and Spanish.
Satchidanandan has also been a major translator of poetry and has 16 collections of world and Indian poetry in translation. Besides about sixty significant Indian poets, he has translated several European, Latin American, African and Asian poets into Malayalam.
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