Arvind Krishna Mehrotra

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra Biography

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is a noted poet, translator of poets and critic. He published four collections of poems - Nine Enclosures (1976), Distance in Statute Miles (1982), Middle Earth (1984) and The Transfiguring Places (1998). He taught English at University of Allahabad since 1968 and serves as visiting professor at many universities. He has edited the award winning book - A History of Indian Literature in English. Apart from four collections of poetry in English he has also published two translation works. Apart from editing books, he has also served as the editor of several magazines. He was a recipient of a PEN Translation Fund Grant in 2009.

He was born in Lahore of present day Pakistan and educated at the universities of Allahabad and Bombay. After that he joined University of Allahabad as a faculty in 1968. After that he had a long teaching career in which he taught at various educational institutions. Partial Recall: Essays on Literature and Literary History and Songs of Kabir are his recent publications.

His translation works are equally famous as his original ones and he is often addressed as translator of poets. He has translated Songs of Kabir, Prakrit love poems and many more works. Mehrotra’s poems, essays, and translations have appeared in dozens of anthologies. His anthology works - "Middle Earth", "Nine enclosures" and "The transfiguring places" are regarded as significant contributions to Indian modern poetry and he often experiments with his writings. ‘Songs of Kabir’ has been a “work in progress” for 40 years. So it’s no surprise that he has been living with Kabir for a long period.

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Updated: June 19, 2014