Ferry Crossings; work included in The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets.
Spouse
Devika Sequeira
Children
Shaira Sequeira Shetty, Riya Sequeira Shetty
Manohar Shetty (born 1953)[1] is a
Goa-based poet considered one of the prominent
Indian poets writing in the
English language.[2]
He has been a Senior Fellow with the
Sahitya Akademi, the Indian academy of arts and letters, and his work is found in several anthologies, including The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets[3] edited by
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and anthologies edited by
Eunice de Souza,
Vilas Sarang and
Jeet Thayil.
Life
Manohar Shetty was born in
Bombay and educated in
Panchgani.[4] He graduated from Bombay University in 1974 and began working as a journalist.[4][5]
Critical perspectives
Shetty's poetry is seen as being an integral part of the "chronology of modern Indian English poetry."[6][7] His poetry is described as revelling in "the celebration of the sombre" and being filled with "sepulchral images" while their "mood is predominantly one of helplessness and lethargy."[4]
Shetty is listed in Sudeep Sen's essay "New Indian Poetry: The 1990s Perspective", published in World Literature Today, Vol. 68, No. 2.[8] K. Narayana Chandran of the
University of Hyderabad, while reviewing[9] Shetty's Domestic Creatures in World Literature Today, comments: "To be able to write magnificently about the little world one knows - and what passionate care all this involves - is no small gift for a poet. Manohar Shetty is an eminently gifted poet in this sense."
In another review[10] of Shetty's A Guarded Space, in 1982 in the same journal (
World Literature Today), S. Amanuddin is more critical.
New Delhi-based magazine
Caravan described Shetty as "something of a rarity among
Indian Englishpoets of his and preceding generations, who have tended to be rather less consistent in their output."[11]
Poetry volumes
As of 2017, he has published eight volumes of poetry. They are:
Evaluations of his work have been included in Modern Indian Poetry in English (New Delhi: OUP, 1987, 2011, Bruce King Ed.) and An Illustrated History of Indian Literature in English (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003,
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Ed.).
His work has appeared in The Baffler (US), the London Magazine, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, Wasafiri, Chelsea (US), Rattapallax (US), Fulcrum (US), Shenandoah (US), The Common (US), New Letters (US), Helix (Australia).
Personal life
He has been based in
Goa since 1985. Shetty is based in
Dona Paula, a suburb some seven kilometres from the state capital of
Panjim (
Panaji) in
Goa. He has written an account[16] of his experiences with alcohol in the book House Spirit: Drinking in India - Stories, Essays, Poems[18] (Speaking Tiger Books).
Notes
^"Manohar Shetty". Open Space. OpenSpaceIndia.org. Retrieved 6 March 2017.
^"The Third Generation: Melanie Silgardo and Manohar Shetty," chapter 21 of A History of Indian Poetry in English by Rosinka Chaudhuri, Cambridge University Press, 2016.
^"The Third Generation: Melanie Silgardo and Manohar Shetty," chapter 21 of A History of Indian Poetry in English by Rosinka Chaudhuri, Cambridge University Press, 2016.
^Sen, Sudeep (1994). "New Indian Poetry: The 1990s Perspective". World Literature Today. 68 (2): 276.
doi:
10.2307/40150142.
JSTOR40150142. – via
JSTOR(subscription required)
^Chandran, K. Narayana (Autumn 1995). "Review-Domestic Creatures by Manohar Shetty". World Literature Today. 69 (4): 875.
doi:
10.2307/40151820.
JSTOR40151820. – via
JSTOR(subscription required)
^Amanuddin, S. (Autumn 1982). "Review-A Guarded Space by Manohar Shetty". World Literature Today. 56 (4): 758.
doi:
10.2307/40138461.
JSTOR40138461. – via
JSTOR(subscription required)