Devkota, Laxmi Prasad

Born 1908; died 1959. Nepali poet. Member of the Academy of Literature, Arts, and Sciences of Nepal.

Devkota’s early poems were influenced by the English Lake School and Indian romanticism (Chayavad). Poems such as “Evening” and “The Rose” show the poet’s rapturous perception of nature. Later, idyllic images are replaced by hymns to storms, symbolizing the vicissitudes in the life of society. Devkota’s poems laid the foundation for the poetry of the so-called nature school (prakriti kavita). In the early 1940’s social themes appeared in his works. The poems “The Poor Man,” “The Beggar,” and “The Street Singer” are permeated with compassion for the hard lot of the workers. His poems for children were published in the collections Golden Morning (1953) and The Doll (1953). Devkota was the author of the first narrative poems in Nepali literature that borrowed heavily from folk art: Muna Mudan (1938), Shakuntala (1945), and Sulochana (1946). He introduced the folk-song meter—jhyaure —into literature.