A. K. Ramanujan

Attipate Krishnaswami Ramanujan (16 March 1929 – 13 July 1993) popularly known as A. K. Ramanujan was an Indian poet and scholar of Indian literature who wrote in both English and Kannada. Ramanujan was a poet, scholar, professor, a philologist, folklorist, translator, and playwright. His academic research ranged across five languages: English, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, and Sanskrit. He published works on both classical and modern variants of this literature and argued strongly for giving local, non-standard dialects their due. Though he wrote widely and in a number of genres, Ramanujan's poems are remembered as enigmatic works of startling originality, sophistication and moving artistry. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award posthumously in 1999 for his collection of poems, The Collected Poems.

Selected publications

His works include translations from Old Tamil and Old Kannada, such as:

Translations and Studies of Literature

English

• The Interior Landscape: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology, 1967
• Speaking of Siva, Penguin. 1973. ISBN 9780140442700.
• The Literatures of India. Edited with Edwin Gerow. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974
• Hymns for the Drowning, 1981
• Poems of Love and War. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985
• Folktales from India, Oral Tales from Twenty Indian Languages, 1991
• Is There an Indian Way of Thinking? in India Through Hindu Categories, edited by McKim Marriott, 1990
• When God Is a Customer: Telugu Courtesan Songs by Ksetrayya and Others (with Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman), 1994
• A Flowering Tree and Other Oral Tales from India, 1997

Essays

Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translation^[19]

Collected Essays of A. K. Ramanujan^[20]

Poetry in English

• The Striders. London: Oxford University Press, 1966^[21]
• Relations. London, New York: Oxford University Press, 1971
• Selected Poems. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1976^[22]
• Second Sight. New York: Oxford University Press,^[23]
• The Collected Poems. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997^[24][25]

Kannada

• Samskara. (translation of U R Ananthamurthy's Kannada novel) Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1976
• Hokkulalli Huvilla (translated to English - "No Flower in the Navel"). Dharwad, 1969
• Mattu Itara Padyagalu (translated to English - "And Other Poems"). Dharwad, 1977
• Kuntobille (translated to English - "Hopscotch")
• Mattobbana Atma Charitre (translated to English - "Yet Another Man's Autobiography")
• Haladi Meenu (Kannada Translation of Shouri's English Novel)
• A. K. Ramanujan Samagra (Complete Works of A. K. Ramanujan in Kannada)
• A. K. Ramanujan Avara Aayda Kavitegalu
• A. K. Ramanujan Avara Aayda Barahagalu

Appearances in the following poetry Anthologies

• Ten Twentieth-Century Indian Poets (1976) ed. by R. Parthasarathy and published by Oxford University Press, New Delhi^[26]
• The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets (1992) ed. by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and published by Oxford University Press, New Delhi^[27][28]
• The Golden Treasure of Writers Workshop Poetry (2008) ed. by Rubana Huq and published by Writers Workshop, Calcutta^[29]

Further reading

• Guillermo Rodriguez, When Mirrors are Windows: A View of AK Ramanujan’s Poetics ( OUP, 2016)^[30]