Sugathakumari, the Malayalam Poetess Selected For Saraswati Samman 2012

Sugathakumari, the Malayalam poetess in the third week of March 2013 was chosen for the Saraswati Samman 2012 for the poetry collection Manalezhuthu, which means The Writing on the Sand in English. The Saraswati Samman is constituted by K. K. Birla Foundation.

79-year-old Sugathakumari was selected for Saraswati Samman by the 13-member jury. The head of this jury was former Chief Justice of India R. C. Lahoti. The jury considered works of the artists published in 22 different languages from 2002 to 2011. Saraswati Samman is awarded annually for outstanding literary work in any Indian language in past 10 years.

About Sugathakumari

• Sugathakumari has 15 volumes of poetry credited to her.
• She also has six collections of prose. Her career spans over a duration of five decades.
• The themes of her poems revolve around moral alertness, emotional empathy as well as humanist sensitivity. Her poems also include social themes such as women oppression, failures of the ideals which inspired India as well as ecological crisis.
• Sugathakumari is also the passionate environmentalist.
• She was also the head of Kerala’s State Women’s Commission.
• Manalezhuthu, the poetry collection for which she was chosen, is actually a collection of 27 different poems. This was published in 2006. The poetry collection is said to be a representation of best of contemporary Malayalam poetry.

About Saraswati Samman

• Saraswati Samman is constituted by K. K. Birla Foundation.
• The award carries cash prize of 10 lakh Rupees, a plaque as well as a citation.
• This award is given every year to the literary work in any Indian language which is the part of Eighth Schedule of the Constitution.
• Apart from this award, K. K. Birla Foundation also constituted other two awards which include Bihari Puraskar for Hindi and Rajasthani writers and Vyas Samman for Hindi.