Indian English Poets

The first Asian Nobel laureate — poet, novelist, playwright, composer, and the defining cultural figure of modern Bengal. He wrote the national anthems of two nations.

Poet and freedom fighter, the first Indian woman to lead the Indian National Congress. Gandhi called her the Nightingale of India.

The most confessional voice in Indian English poetry — who made female desire a legitimate literary subject and shocked a generation with her frank memoir My Story.

Poet, folklorist, linguist, and translator — the most intellectually complete figure in Indian English literature, equally significant in three literary traditions.

The father of Indian poetry in English — who made Bombay his subject and mentored an entire generation through his magazine Quest.

Bilingual poet of Bombay's pavements and a sceptic's pilgrimage — who refused almost every literary convention.

Kashmiri-American poet of exile and loss — who brought the ghazal into English on its own terms.