Kamala Suraiyya (formerly known as Kamala Das)
Born	(1934-03-31)March 31, 1934 Punnayurkulam, Malabar District, Madras Presidency, British India
Died	May 31, 2009(2009-05-31) (aged 75) Pune, Maharashtra, India
Pen name	Madhavikkutty
Occupation	Poet, short story writer
Nationality	Indian
Genres	Poetry, Short story
Notable award(s)	Ezhuthachchan Puraskaram, Vayalar Award, Sahitya Akademi Award, Asan World Prize, Asian Poetry Prize, Kent Award
Spouse(s)	Madhava Das

Kamala Suraiyya (b. Kamala Madhavikutty) (Malayalam കമലാ സുരയ്യ / മാധവിക്കുട്ടി) (31 March 1934 – 31 May 2009) was a major Indian English poet and littérateur and at the same time a leading Malayalam author from Kerala, India. Her popularity in Kerala is based chiefly on her short stories and autobiography, while her oeuvre in English, written under the name Kamala Das, is noted for the fiery poems and explicit autobiography.

Her open and honest treatment of female sexuality, free from any sense of guilt, infused her writing with power, but also marked her as an iconoclast in her generation.^[1] On 31 May 2009, aged 75, she died at a hospital in Pune,^[2] but has earned considerable respect in recent years.

Early life[link]

Kamala Das was born in Punnayurkulam, Thrissur District in Kerala, on March 31, 1934, to V. M. Nair, a former managing editor of the widely-circulated Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi, and Nalappatt Balamani Amma, a renowned Malayali poetess.

She spent her childhood between Calcutta, where her father was employed as a senior officer in the Walford Transport Company that sold Bentley and Rolls Royce automobiles, and the Nalappatt ancestral home in Punnayurkulam.

Like her mother, Kamala Das also excelled in writing. Her love of poetry began at an early age through the influence of her great uncle, Nalappatt Narayana Menon, a prominent writer.

At the age of 15, she got married to bank officer Madhava Das, who encouraged her writing interests, and she started writing and publishing both in English and in Malayalam. Calcutta in the 1960s was a tumultous time for the arts, and Kamala Das was one of the many voices that came up and started appearing in cult anthologies along with a generation of Indian English poets.^[3]

Literary career[link]

She was noted for her many Malayalam short stories as well as many poems written in English. Das was also a syndicated columnist. She once claimed that "poetry does not sell in this country [India]", but her forthright columns, which sounded off on everything from women's issues and child care to politics, were popular.

Das' first book of poetry, Summer In Calcutta was a breath of fresh air in Indian English poetry. She wrote chiefly of love, its betrayal, and the consequent anguish. Ms. Das abandoned the certainties offered by an archaic, and somewhat sterile, aestheticism for an independence of mind and body at a time when Indian poets were still governed by "19th-century diction, sentiment and romanticised love."^[4] Her second book of poetry, The descendants was even more explicit, urging women to:

Gift him what makes you woman, the scent of

Long hair, the musk of sweat between the breasts,

The warm shock of menstrual blood, and all your

Endless female hungers ..." - The Looking Glass

This directness of her voice led to comparisons with Marguerite Duras and Sylvia Plath^[4]

At the age of 42, she published a daring autobiography, My Story; it was originally written in Malayalam and later she translated it into English. Later she admitted that much of the autobiography had fictional elements.^[5]

Kamala Das wrote on a diverse range of topics, often disparate- from the story of a poor old servant, about the sexual disposition of upper middle class women living near a metropolitan city or in the middle of the ghetto. Some of her better-known stories include Pakshiyude Manam, Neypayasam, Thanuppu, and Chandana Marangal. She wrote a few novels, out of which Neermathalam Pootha Kalam, which was received favourably by the reading public as well as the critics, stands out.

She travelled extensively to read poetry to Germany's University of Duisburg-Essen, University of Bonn and University of Duisburg universities, Adelaide Writer's Festival , Frankfurt Book Fair, University of Kingston, Jamaica, Singapore, and South Bank Festival (London), Concordia University (Montreal, Canada), etc. Her works are available in French, Spanish, Russian, German and Japanese.

She has also held positions as Vice chairperson in Kerala Sahitya Academy, chairperson in Kerala forestry Board, President of the Kerala Children's Film Society, editor of Poet magazine^[6] and Poetry editor of Illustrated Weekly of India.

Although occasionally seen as an attention-grabber in her early years,^[7] she is now seen as one of the most formative influences on Indian English poetry. In 2009, The Times called her "the mother of modern English Indian poetry".^[4]

Conversion to Islam[link]

She was born in a conservative Hindu Nair (Nallappattu) family having royal ancestry,^[8] After being asked by her lover Sadiq Ali, an Islamic scholar and a Muslim League MP,^[9] she embraced Islam in 1999 at the age of 65 and assumed the name Kamala Surayya.^[10]

After converting, she wrote:^[10]

Life has changed for me since Nov. 14 when a young man named Sadiq Ali walked in to meet me. He is 38 and has a beautiful smile. Afterwards he began to woo me on the phone from Abu Dhabi and Dubai, reciting Urdu couplets and telling me of what he would do to me after our marriage. I took my nurse Mini and went to his place in my car. I stayed with him for three days. There was a sunlit river, some trees, and a lot of laughter. He asked me to become a Muslim which I did on my return home.

Her conversion was rather controversial, among social and literary circles, with The Hindu calling it part of her "histrionics".^[7] She said she liked being behind the protective veil of the purdah.^[11] Later, she felt it was not worth it to change one's religion and said "I fell in love with a Muslim after my husband's death. He was kind and generous in the beginning. But I now feel one shouldn't change one's religion. It is not worth it.".^[12]

Politics[link]

Though never politically active before, she launched a national political party, Lok Seva Party, aiming asylum to orphaned mothers and promotion of secularism. In 1984 she unsuccessfully contested in the Indian Parliament elections.^[13]

Personal life[link]

Kamala Das had three sons - M D Nalapat, Chinnen Das and Jayasurya Das.^[14] Madhav Das Nalapat, the eldest, is married to Princess Lakshmi Bayi (daughter of M.R.Ry. Sri Chembrol Raja Raja Varma Avargal) from the Travancore Royal House.^[15] He holds the UNESCO Peace Chair and Professor of geopolitics at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education. He was formerly a resident editor of the Times of India.

She had a sexual relationship with Sadiq Ali, an Islamic scholar who was much younger in age. She herself describes her visit to Sadiq Ali's home as follows:^[16]

“I was almost asleep when Sadiq Ali climbed in beside me, holding me, breathing softly, whispering endearments, kissing my face, breasts ... and when he entered me, it was the first time I had ever experienced what it was like to feel a man from the inside."

On 31 May 2009, aged 75, she died at a hospital in Pune. Her body was flown to her home state of Kerala. She was buried at the Palayam Juma Masjid at Thiruvanathapuram with full state honour.^[17][18]

Awards and other recognitions[link]

Kamala Das has received many awards for her literary contribution, including:

• Nominated and shortlisted for Nobel Prize in 1984.^[19]
• Asian Poetry Prize-1998
• Kent Award for English Writing from Asian Countries-1999
• Asian World Prize-2000
• Ezhuthachan Award-2009
• Sahitya Academy Award-2003
• Vayalar Award2001
• Kerala Sahitya Academy Award-2005
• Muttathu Varkey Award^[20]

She was a longtime friend of Canadian writer Merrily Weisbord, who published a memoir of their friendship, The Love Queen of Malabar, in 2010.^[21]

Bibliography[link]

English[link]

• 1964: The Sirens (Asian Poetry Prize winner)
• 1965: Summer in Calcutta (poetry; Kent's Award winner)
• 1967: The Descendants (poetry)
• 1973: The Old Playhouse and Other Poems (poetry)
• 1976: My Story (autobiography)
• 1977: Alphabet of Lust (novel)
• 1985: The Anamalai Poems (poetry)
• 1992: Padmavati the Harlot and Other Stories (collection of short stories)
• 1996: Only the Soul Knows How to Sing (poetry)
• 2001: Yaa Allah (collection of poems)
• 1979: Tonight,This Savage Rite (with Pritish Nandy)
• 1999: My Mother At Sixty-six (Poem)

Malayalam[link]

• 1964: Pakshiyude Manam (short stories)
• 1966: Naricheerukal Parakkumbol (short stories)
• 1968: Thanuppu (short story, Sahitya Academi award)
• 1982: Ente Katha (autobiography)
• 1987: Balyakala Smaranakal (Childhood Memories)
• 1989: Varshangalkku Mumbu (Years Before)
• 1990: Palayan (novel)
• 1991: Neypayasam (short story)
• 1992: Dayarikkurippukal (novel)
• 1994: Neermathalam Pootha Kalam (novel, Vayalar Award)
• 1996: Chekkerunna Pakshikal (short stories)
• 1998: Nashtapetta Neelambari (short stories)
• "Ente Kadha" (Autobiography)
• 2005: Chandana Marangal (Novel)
• 2005: Madhavikkuttiyude Unmakkadhakal (short stories)2x
• 2005: Vandikkalakal (novel)
• 1999: My Mother At Sixty-six (Poem)

See also[link]

Poetry portal

• Indian English Literature
• Indian Writing in English

References[link]

8. The Ignited Soul by Shreekumar Varma

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Kamala Surayya

• Varsha Bhosle on Kamala Das' conversion to Islam
• "From Kamala Das to Dashi: Doing the right thing for wrong reasons?" by Dr Mohammad Omar Farooq
• Translation of Neypayasam
• Eroticism and feminism in Das' writings
• The histrionics of Kamala Das
• Funeral
• Kamala Suraiyya - Daily Telegraph obituary

Stephen Spender
180px Spender in 1933
Born	Stephen Harold Spender (1909-02-28)28 February 1909 Kensington, London, England
Died	16 July 1995(1995-07-16) (aged 86) Westminster, London, England
Occupation	Poet, novelist, essayist
Nationality	United Kingdom
Alma mater	University College, Oxford
Spouse(s)	Natasha Litvin
Signature

Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work. He was appointed the seventeenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the United States Library of Congress in 1965.^[1]

Biography[link]

Early years[link]

Spender was born in Kensington, London, to journalist Edward Harold Spender and Violet Hilda Schuster, a painter and poet.^[2][3] He went first to Hall School in Hampstead and then at thirteen to Gresham's School in Holt and later Charlecote School in Worthing, but was unhappy there. On the death of his mother he was transferred to University College School (Hampstead), which he later described as "that gentlest of Schools."^[4] Spender subsequently went up to University College, Oxford where, in 1973, he was made an honorary fellow. He left Oxford without taking a degree and subsequently lived for periods of time in Germany. He said at various times throughout his life that he never passed an exam, ever. Perhaps his closest friend and the man who had the biggest influence on him was W. H. Auden. Around this time he was also friends with Christopher Isherwood (who had also lived in Weimar Germany), and fellow Macspaunday members Louis MacNeice and Cecil Day-Lewis. He was friendly with David Jones and later come to know W. B. Yeats, Allen Ginsberg, Ted Hughes, Joseph Brodsky, Isaiah Berlin, Mary McCarthy, Roy Campbell, Raymond Chandler, Dylan Thomas, Jean-Paul Sartre and T. S. Eliot, as well as members of the Bloomsbury Group, in particular Virginia Woolf.

His early poetry, notably Poems (1933) was often inspired by social protest. His convictions found further expression in Vienna (1934), a long poem in praise of the 1934 uprising of Viennese socialists, and in Trial of a Judge (1938), an anti-Fascist drama in verse. His autobiography, World within World (1951), is a re-creation of much of the political and social atmosphere of the 1930s.

Career[link]

Spender began work on a novel in 1929, which was not published until 1988, under the title The Temple. The novel is about a young man who travels to Germany and finds a culture at once more open than England—particularly about relationships between men—and showing frightening anticipations of Nazism, which are confusingly related to the very openness the main character admires. Spender says in his 1988 introduction:

In the late Twenties young English writers were more concerned with censorship than with politics... 1929 was the last year of that strange Indian Summer—the Weimar Republic. For many of my friends and for myself, Germany seemed a paradise where there was no censorship and young Germans enjoyed extraordinary freedom in their lives...^[5]

When the Spanish civil war began, he went to Spain with the International Brigades (who were fighting against Francisco Franco's forces) to report and observe for the Communist Party of Great Britain. Harry Pollitt, head of the CPGB, told Spender "to go and get killed; we need a Byron in the movement."^{[citation needed]}

His 1938 translations of works by Bertolt Brecht and Miguel Hernández appeared in John Lehmann's New Writing.^[6]

A member of the political left wing during this early period, he was one of those who wrote of their disillusionment with communism in the essay collection The God that Failed (1949), along with Arthur Koestler and others.^[7] It is thought that one of the big areas of disappointment was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, which many leftists saw as a betrayal. Like fellow poets W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, and several other outspoken opponents of fascism in the 1930s, Spender did not see active military service in World War II. He was initially graded 'C' upon examination due to his earlier colitis, poor eyesight, varicose veins and the long term effects of a tapeworm in 1934. However, he contrived by pulling strings to be re-examined and was upgraded to 'B' which meant that he could serve in the London Auxiliary Fire Service. Spender spent the winter of 1940 teaching at Blundell's School, having taken the position left vacant by Manning Clark, who returned to Australia as a consequence of the war to teach at Geelong Grammar.^[8]

He felt close to the Jewish people; his mother, Violet Hilda Schuster, was half Jewish (her father's family were German Jews who converted to Christianity, while her mother came from an upper-class family of Catholic German, Lutheran Danish and distantly Italian descent). Spender's second wife, Natasha, whom he married in 1941, was also Jewish.

After the war he was member of the Allied Control Commission, restoring civil authority in Germany.^[9]

With Cyril Connolly and Peter Watson Spender co-founded Horizon magazine and served as its editor from 1939 to 1941. He was editor of Encounter magazine from 1953 to 1966, but resigned after it emerged that the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which published the magazine, was being covertly funded by the CIA.^[10] Spender always insisted that he was unaware of the ultimate source of Encounter's funds. Spender taught at various American institutions, accepting the Elliston Chair of Poetry at the University of Cincinnati in 1954. In 1961 he became professor of rhetoric at Gresham College, London.

He helped found the magazine Index on Censorship, he was involved in the founding of the Poetry Book Society, and he did work for UNESCO.^[11]

Spender was Professor of English at University College, London, 1970–77, and then became Professor Emeritus.

Spender was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) at the 1962 Queen's Birthday Honours,^[12] and knighted in the 1983 Queen's Birthday Honours.^[13][14]

At a ceremony commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the Normandy Invasion, D-day on 6 June 1984, President Ronald Reagan quoted from Spender's poem "The Truly Great" in his remarks:

Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your "lives fought for life... and left the vivid air signed with your honor."

Personal life[link]

In 1933, Spender fell in love with Tony Hyndman, and they lived together 1935-36.^[15] In 1934, Spender had an affair with Muriel Gardiner. In a letter to Christopher Isherwood in September 1934 he said: "I find boys much more attractive, in fact I am rather more than usually susceptible, but actually I find the actual sexual act with women more satisfactory, more terrible, more disgusting, and, in fact, more everything."^[15] In 1936, shortly after the end of his relationship with Tony Hyndman, Spender fell in love with and married Inez Maria Pearn. This marriage broke down in 1939.^[15] In 1941, Spender married Natasha Litvin, a concert pianist. This marriage lasted until his death. Their daughter Lizzie is married to the Australian actor/comedian Barry Humphries, and their son Matthew is married to the daughter of the Armenian artist Arshile Gorky.

Spender's sexuality has been the subject of debate. Spender's seemingly changing attitudes have caused him to be labeled bisexual, repressed, latently homophobic, or simply someone so complex as to resist easy labelling.^[16] Many of his friends in his earlier years were gay. Spender himself had many affairs with men in his earlier years, most notably with Tony Hyndman (who is called "Jimmy Younger" in his memoir World Within World). Following his affair with Muriel Gardiner he shifted his focus to heterosexuality,^[9] though his relationship with Hyndman complicated both this relationship and his short-lived marriage to Inez Maria Pearn (1936–39). His marriage to Natasha Litvin in 1941 seems to have marked the end of his romantic relationships with men. Subsequently, he toned down homosexual allusions in later editions of his poetry. The following line was revised in a republished edition: "Whatever happens, I shall never be alone. I shall always have a boy, a railway fare, or a revolution." was later revised to read: "Whatever happens, I shall never be alone. I shall always have an affair, a railway fare, or a revolution." Spender sued author David Leavitt for allegedly using his relationship with "Jimmy Younger" in Leavitt's While England Sleeps in 1994. The case was settled out of court with Leavitt removing certain portions from his text.

Spender died from heart failure in Westminster, London, at 86.^[17]

Stephen Spender Memorial Trust[link]

The Stephen Spender Memorial Trust was founded in 1997 to commemorate Spender's life and works and to encourage some of his principal interests: poetry, poetic translation, and freedom of creative expression. The Trust aims to widen knowledge of Spender and his circle, help contemporary writers reach an English language audience, and promote literary translation from modern and ancient languages into English. The Trust runs a programme of grants to support translators, as well as an annual translation competition, The Times Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry Translation.^[18]

Works[link]

See also[link]

Poetry portal

• List of Gresham Professors of Rhetoric
• Mary Spender (singer/songwriter) is a distant cousin to Stephen Spender.

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Hynes, Samuel, The Auden Generation (1976)
• Sutherland, John, Stephen Spender: The Authorized Biography (2004); US edition: Stephen Spender: A Literary Life (2005)
• New Collected Poems of Stephen Spender (Author), Michael Brett (Editor) 2004

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Stephen Spender

• profile and poems at Poets.org
• profile and poems written and audio at Poetry Archive
• profile and poems at Poetry Foundation
• Peter A. Stitt (Winter-Spring 1980). "Stephen Spender, The Art of Poetry No. 25". The Paris Review. http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3346/the-art-of-poetry-no-25-stephen-spender. 
• Ernest Hilbert reviews of Stephen Spender's autobiography World Within World. Random House Publishers
• Stephen Spender Memorial Trust and poetry prize
• "Spender's Lives" - Ian Hamilton, The New Yorker
• "Stephen Spender, Toady: Was there any substance to his politics and art?" – Stephen Metcalf, Slate.com, 7 February 2005