Soumitra Mohan (born January 2, 1938) is a prominent

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

and an exponent of the Akavita (अकविता - anti-poetry) movement in Hindi poetry. He is known as a rebel who voiced vehement protest, and is best remembered for his poem, ''Luqman Ali''.

Works

Mohan has published three

anthologies In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs, or related fiction/non-fiction excerpts by different authors. There are also thematic and ge ...

of poems in Hindi—''Chaaku Se Khelte Hue (चाकू से खेलते हुए -'' 1972), ''Luqman Ali (लुक़मान अली -'' 1978), and ''Aadha Dikhta Wah Aadmi (आधा दिखता वह आदमी'' - 2018'')''. Mohan is also a distinguished translator and has published

translation Translation is the communication of the semantics, meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The English la ...

of several prose works—most notably ''Dehra Mein Ab Bhi Ugte Hain Hamare Ped'' (देहरा में अब भी उगते हैं हमारे पेड़), a translation of

Ruskin Bond Ruskin Bond (born 19 May 1934) is an Indian author. His first novel, ''The Room on the Roof'', published in 1956, received the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Bond has authored more than 500 short stories, essays, and novels which includes 69 books ...

's ''Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra''). He was one of major poets featured in ''Nishedh (निषेध),'' a landmark anthology of poems published in the 1970s. Despite having published his writings sparingly, Mohan's stature as a major Hindi poet of the 20th century is widely accepted. Soumitra Mohan

Soumitra's celebrated long poem ''Luqman Ali (लुक़मान अली )'' appeared in an English translation by Samartha Vashishtha—first in ''Chandrabhaga'' (Cuttack, 2007, edited by

Jayanta Mahapatra Jayanta Mahapatra (22 October 1928 – 27 August 2023) was an Indian poet. He is the first Indian poet to win a Sahitya Akademi award for English poetry. He was the author of poems such as "Indian Summer" and "Hunger", which are regarded as c ...

) and then in the international magazine of translated literature, ''Asymptote''. In the year 2018, Sambhavna Prakashan (Hapur, India) published a volume of Soumitra Mohan's collected poems titled ''Aadha Dikhta Wah Aadmi (आधा दिखता वह आदमी)'', bringing together his work spanning the years 1961 to 2017. In his introduction to the book, Soumitra emphasizes:

"This book collects a total of 149 of my poems. It is my wish that readers know my work only through these poems. These are my 'collected poems' – even though I make no claim about this selection being my best."

"इस किताब में मेरी कुल 149 कविताएँ हैं। मैं चाहता हूँ लोग मुझे इन्हीं कविताओं से जानें-पहचानें। यही मेरी 'सम्पूर्ण कविताएँ' हैं हालाँकि इनके श्रेष्ठ होने के बारे में मेरा कोई दावा नहीं है।"

References

1938 births Living people Indian male poets Hindi-language poets {{India-poet-stub