Malayalam poet gets Birla Foundation award

Manalezhuthu — a collection of Malayalam poems — has been selected for the Saraswati Samman for the year 2012.

Manalezhuthu — a collection of Malayalam poems — has been selected for the Saraswati Samman for the year 2012.

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The K K Birla Foundation has announced the award for Sugathakumari — a reputed Malayalam poet and activist — for her anthology marking a variety of lyrical mode and complexity of metaphorical imagination.

“Contemporaneity of the themes, especially those dealing with women, children and environment make this anthology dearer to the hearts of the socially-sensitive readers,” the foundation said on Manalezhuthu.

The Saraswati Samman is one of the three literary awards instituted by the foundation and is given annually to an outstanding literary work in any of the Indian languages part of the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. The honour, apart from a citation, carries an award money of Rs 10 lakh. Vyas Samman for Hindi and Bihari Puraskar for Hindi and Rajasthani writers of Rajasthan are the other literary awards given by the foundation.

With over 15 volumes of poetry and six collections of prose published during last five decades, Sugathakumari has established herself as a popular Malayalam poet with a unique voice characterised by empathy, humanist sensitivity and moral alertness.