Sankara Kurup, G.

Born June 3, 1901, in the village of Nayattode, in the present-day state of Kerala. Indian poet writing in Malayalam. Member of the Literary Academy of India since 1954.

Sankara Kurup graduated from the University of Madras and was a professor of Malayalam until 1961. His early lyric verse, showing the influence of English romantic poetry, was published in the collections Literary Leisure (vols. 1–4, 1923–29) and Sunbeams (1932). In the 1940’s, under the influence of the rising national-liberation movement, Sankara Kurup turned to civic themes, and the realistic element in his writing became stronger, as exemplified in the collections Discovery of the World (1960) and The Gift (1961).

In 1966, Sankara Kurup’s collection The Flute (1950) was awarded the Shri Prize for literature. His poetry reveals a predilection for symbolist techniques. He has translated into Malayalam poems by Hafiz, O. Khayyam, and R. Tagore, Kalidasa’s narrative poem The Cloud-Messenger, and works by L. N. Tolstoy. Sankara Kurup is active in the Society for Indo-Soviet Cultural Relations.