K. Satchidanandan (b.1946 May) is a major Indian poet and critic of national recognition writing in Malayalam and English.  Having done his M.A. in English Literature from the University of Kerala and his Ph.D. in Post-Structuralist Literary Theory from the University of Calicut, he worked first as Lecturer and later as Professor of English at Christ College affiliated to the University of Calicut, Kerala.  After 25 years of teaching he left Kerala to join the Sahitya Akademi (National Academy of Letters) on its invitation to take up the editorship of its prestigious literary journal in English, Indian Literature in 1992.  He took over as Secretary, Sahitya Akademi on 1 November, 1996, on the unanimous recommendation of a panel of seven distinguished Indian writers and scholars.He retired in 2006 and worked as a Language Policy Consultant to the Ministry of Human Resources, Govt. of India and as Consultant to The National Translation Mission. He was Chief Editor, Katha India Library, a series of contemporary Indian classics in fiction in translation, Co-Editor of Beyond Borders, a SAARC journal of  culture published by the Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature, the Chief Editor of The SAARC Library of South Asian Literature and is now Guest-editor, Indian Literature  and President, Ayyappa Paniker Foundation, Kerala.  

As a poet, Satchidanandan has been hailed by critics as a pioneer of the New Poetry in Malayalam. The publication of his first collection of poetry, Anchusooryan (Five Suns) in 1970 was a major event in Malayalam literature.  Since then he has published 21 more collections of poetry, including Ivanekkoodi (Him too), Malayalam, Vikku (Stammer), Sakshyangal (Witnesses), Anantam (Infinite) and Marannu Vecha Vastukkal (The Mislaid Objects) besides 'Collected Poems' (1982) 'Selected Poems' (1999) and ‘Poems:1965-2005’ (Three Volumes, 2006) all of which have received great critical acclaim and won different awards.  Several of his poems are included in school text books and many collections have been text books at graduate and post-graduate levels in various Indian Universities and the subject of many doctoral dissertations.  His poems have appeared in several national and international journals and every anthology of modern Malayalam as well as Indian poetry and many anthologies of world literature like Two Plus Two  (Mylbaris, Switzerland), Voices of Conscience  (London), Index to Censorship  (London) , Love Poems from India ( Everyman, London) Language for a New Century (Norton, New York) and Noir Sur Blanc (Paris).  Translations of his poetry have also appeared in several reputed journals in India and abroad.  He has five collections of poems in English translation viz, Summer Rain, How to Go to the Tao Temple, Imperfect and Other Poems, So Many Births ,and Stammer and Other Poems all of which have been highly praised by critics in India and abroad. His new collection is about to be published by Harper-Collins.  His collections have also appeared in Hindi (6), Tamil (4), Kannada, Assamese, Gujarati, Bengali, Oriya, Urdu(2), Telugu and Punjabi. His collection Tant de vies (So Many Births,2000) appeared in French in a series of anthologies of international poets alongwith those of Lorca, Neruda, Amichai, Senghor, Milosz and others. His Italian collection I Riti Della Terra (The Rites of the Earth) was published in February 2005 by Castelvecchi, a reputed publishing firm based in Rome. His German collection, Ich glaube nicht an Grenzen (I Do Not Believe in Borders, published by Draupadi) was released at the Frankfurt Book Fair, 2006. His Arabic collection, How Did Mayakovsky Commit Suicide was published by Kalima  in March, 2009 at Abu Dhabi. His poems have also been translated into all major Indian languages besides Swedish, Russian, Latvian, Serbo-Croatian, Vietnamese, Chinese and Spanish. 

Satchidanandan has represented Indian poetry at several national and international festivals including Valmiki World Poetry Festival (New Delhi, 1985), Sarajevo  Poetry Days (Yugoslavia 1987), Kavita Asia (Bhopal, 1988), Festival of India in the USSR  (1988), SAARC Poets' Meet (Calcutta, 1982), Festival of India in China (1994), International Poetry Biennale (Ivry-Paris, France, 1997), Indian Writers' Get Together (Stockholm, Sweden, 1997) Le Printemps des Poetes (The Spring of Poets, France, 2003) the Berlin Literary Festival (2005),Leipzig Book Fair (2005), Abu Dhabi Book Fair (2005) Frankfurt Book Fair (2005, 2006), Paris Book Fair (2007) Jaipur Literary Festival (2008, 2009),The Indo-Arab Literary Festival, Abu Dhabi (2008), Delhi International Literary Festival (2008) London Book Fair (2009) and Moscow Book Fair (2009) 

Satchidanandan has also been a major translator of poetry and has 16 collections of world and Indian poetry in translation.  Besides about sixty significant Indian poets, he has translated several European, Latin American, African and Asian poets into Malayalam.  He has also translated several plays of W.B.Yeats and Bertolt Brecht into Malayalam and a substantial quantity of Malayalam poetry into English.

He has also written a full length play on Gandhi's last days that won a Kerala Sahitya Akademi award and three one-act plays, besides three books of travel. 

Satchidanandan has been one of the most influential literary critics and theorists of the country.  He has done extensive work on Indian and Western poetics and has been an interpreter of the new movements in Malayalam and other Indian literatures. There are few civilizational issues he has not discussed in his critical-theoretical articles, interviews and lectures that have been collected in 18 volumes that include Kurukshetram, Janatayum Kavitayum (Poetry and the People), Samvadangal (Dialogues), Sameepanangal (Approaches), Veendu Vicharangal (Rethinkings), Muhoortangal (Contexts)  and Adithattukal (In the Depths). His Selected Essays (three volumes) is in press. He has been on several important Academic, literary and public bodies including The Press Council of India, the jury of national awards for literature and cinema, the Poetry Society of India and the World Poetry Academy, Verona (Italy).  He has taken part in scores of national and international seminars, delivered more than a dozen memorial lectures, edited several anthologies of poems, short stories and essays in Malayalam, English and Hindi, like Under the Dark Skies (40 Malayalam short stories), Tana Bana (Post-Independence Poetry in Hindi), Modernism and After (Essays on Modernism in Indian literatures), Antaral (Inter-disciplinary Lecture-series), Authors Speak (Indian authors talking about  their work), Myth in Contemporary Indian Literature( Seminar papers) Gestures (Poetry from SAARC Countries) City in an Oyster (SAARC Short Stories by Women) and Signatures (One Hundred Indian Poets), published and edited six important journals of culture and literature, the latest being Indian Literature in English and Pachakutira (The Green Horse) and Keralakavita in Malayalam. There are two collections of  interviews given by him, besides a book-long interview  and one  collection  of studies by eminent critics on his poetry titled Satchidanandante Lokangal (The Worlds of Satchidanandan). Indian Literature: Positions and Propositions, a collection of his English essays in comparative literature was published by Pencraft International in 1999, followed by Authors, Texts, Issues: Essays in Indian Literature in 2003 . Both these works have attracted national and international attention.A third collection, Indian Literature: Paradigms and Praxis  came out in 2008 followed by Readings (2009). He is presently editing an anthology of South Indian Short Stories in English translation for Oxford University Press and has  come out with an anthology of post-Independence Malayalam poetry, Disakal (Directions) for the National Book Trust, India.  

Satchidanandan has also been a cultural activist  one of the founders of The Secular Forum in Kerala, and been associated with popular science,environmental, civil rights, medical ethics,socialist pedagogy and tribal movements, and been working with The People’s Cultural Forum ,Association for the Protection of Democratic Rights, Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad , Aman Ekta Manch etc. He has made several theoretical and practical interventions in these areas. 

Satchidanandan has won several awards and fellowships for poetry, criticism and translation including Kerala Sahitya Akademi awards four times (for poetry, drama, travelogue and criticism), Mahakavi Ulloor award, the first Mahakavi P. Kunhiraman Nair award, Kumaran Asan award, Odakkuzhal award, Pandalam Kerala Varma award, Bharaitya Bhasha Parishad's Samvatsar award from Kolkata, Gangadhar Meher award from Orissa,  the first Kerala Varma Sahitya Puraskaram, the first M.Kuttikrishnan Memorial Award,Vayalar award and Bapu Reddy Literary Trust National Award and NTR National award  for poetry from Andhrapradesh,  Oman Cultural Centre award, Baharain Kerala Samaj award,Subrahmanya Shenoi Memorial Award, Patmaprabha Award, the first Kadammanitta Ramakrishnan Memorial award from Kuwait, and Sahitya Sree by Delhi Hindi Sahitya Sammelan for total literary contribution, Srikant Verma Fellowship for Poetry Translation, Senior Fellowship from the Department of Culture, Government of India and Birla Fellowship for Comparative Litearture. He has been conferred India–Poland Friendship medal by the Government of Poland and Knighthood of the Order of Merit by the Government of Italy. He has been honoured by Ganakrishti,Kolkata, by the Government of Kerala and Kalidas Academy, Ujjain and awarded the Best Public Observer Prize by the YMCA for his response to social issues. A biographical film on him, Summer Rain, directed by Balu Menon was released recently in Kerala. The countries he has visited as a writer include Pakistan, Dubai, Oman, Abu-Dhabi, Bahrain, Kuwait, Syria, Singapore, Thailand, China, Russia, Latvia, Croatia, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands,  England , France, Italy and the U.S.A. 

E-mail: satchida@gmail.com, satchida@hotmail.com.