Fifth Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Award for Poetry

ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival 2020 to Present Fifth Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Award for Poetry

Every year,the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival celebrates poetry as one of literature’s most effective and powerful art forms and recognises the best among India’s plethora of young and talented poets, and announces the Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Award for Poetry. In association with the Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Foundation, the award is a tribute to Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia and his immense repertoire. In addition to a cash prize of Rs. 1 lakh, the winner receives an opportunity to share the stage with literary heavyweights at the Festival.

Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia was a renowned Rajasthani and Hindi poet. The internationally-acclaimed writer authored a total of 42 books in Hindi, Urdu and Rajasthani. He was a freedom fighter, social reformer, educationist and environmentalist who received the Padma Shri in 2004, the Rajasthan Ratna in 2012, apart from a Sahitya Akademi Award. He was selected as a “Living Legend of the 20th Century” on the occasion of the bi-centenary celebration of the US Library of Congress in Washington.

The fifth edition of this prestigious award has been awarded to Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, a well-known name to readers of contemporary literature. Mehrotra will be felicitated at the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival 2020 at Diggi Palace at Charbagh on 23^rd January, 2020 at 1:40 pm.

Born in Lahore in 1947, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is an eminent poet of English besides being a scholar and a translator of verse. His six collections of poems in English include Nine Closures (1976), Clearing House (1982), The Transfiguring Places: Poems (1998), Collected Poems (2014). Mehrotra has translated more than 200 literary works from the ancient Prakrit language as well as from Hindi, Bengali and Gujrati. His translation of Prakrit love poems, The Absent Traveller and Songs of Kabir, have been widely read and appreciated.

The Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Award is given out after a careful selection process by an eminent jury, comprising renowned writer and Festival Director Namita Gokhale, Managing Director of Teamwork Arts Sanjoy K. Roy, eminent poets AJ Thomas and Nirupama Dutt, along with Jaiprakash Sethia and Siddharth Sethia. Hon. Deputy Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Shri Sachin Pilot, will present the award to this year’s winner. The winners for the previous years are poet Shri Rituraj in 2016, Shri Jayanta Mahapatra in 2017, Shri Surjit Patar in 2018, and Smt Rajathi Salma in 2019. 

Jury member Jaiprakash Sethia said, “Shri Sethia had the rare distinction of becoming a legend during his lifetime. We can safely say more than 15 million people all over the world were aware of Sethiaji and his body of work.”

About the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival 2020

Described as the ‘greatest literary show on Earth’, the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival is a sumptuous feast of ideas. The past decade has seen it transform into a global literary phenomenon having hosted nearly 2000 speakers and welcoming over a million book lovers from across India and the globe. Our core values remain unchanged: to serve as a democratic, non-aligned platform offering free and fair access. Every year, the Festival brings together a diverse mix of the world’s greatest writers, thinkers, humanitarians, politicians, business leaders, sports people and entertainers on one stage to champion the freedom to express and engage in thoughtful debate and dialogue.

Writers and Festival Directors Namita Gokhale and William Dalrymple, alongside producer Teamwork Arts, invite speakers to take part in the five-day programme set against the backdrop of Rajasthan’s stunning cultural heritage and the Diggi Palace in the state capital Jaipur. Past speakers have ranged from Nobel Laureates J.M. Coetzee, Orhan Pamuk and Muhammad Yunus, Man Booker Prize winners Ben Okri, Margaret Atwood and Paul Beatty, Sahitya Akademi winners Gulzar, Javed Akhtar, M.T. Vasudevan Nair as well as the late Girish Karnad, Mahasweta Devi and U.R. Ananthamurthy along with literary superstars including Amish Tripathi, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Vikram Seth. An annual event that goes beyond literature, the Festival has also hosted Amartya Sen, Amitabh Bachchan, the late A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Oprah Winfrey, Stephen Fry, Thomas Piketty and former president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai.

The ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival is a flagship event of Teamwork Arts, which produces it along with over 25 highly acclaimed performing arts, visual arts and literary festivals across more than 40 cities globally. Teamwork Arts also produces JLF London, JLF Belfast, JLF Houston, JLF New York, JLF Colorado, JLF Toronto, JLF Adelaide and for the first time in 2019, JLF Doha.

Website: www.jaipurliteraturefestival.org

About Teamwork Arts

The arts of India are unrivalled in their depth, diversity and mystery and showcasing it to global audiences requires a deep understanding of our culture, an acute sense of relevance in programming and an unflinching attention to detail. Above all, we at Teamwork Arts believe in love and respect for the artist.

Teamwork Arts is a highly versatile production company with roots in the performing arts, social action and the corporate world. Our expertise lies in the area of entertainment and includes documentary and feature films, television, the conceptualisation and development of contemporary performing/visual arts and literary festivals around the world, and in nurturing new talents across all art forms.

For over 25 years, Teamwork Arts has taken India to the world and brought the world to India, presenting the finest of Indian performers, writers and visual artists in the cultural and art space in India and abroad.

Every year, we produce 25 performing/visual arts and literary festivals in 11 countries, including Australia, Canada, Egypt, Germany, France, Hong Kong, Israel, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, the UK and the USA. Teamwork Arts produces the world’s largest free literary gatherings, the annual ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival, the Ishara International Puppet Festival in New Delhi, the annual Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards (META) Festival, international festivals Shared History in South Africa, India by the Nile in Egypt, Eye on India in the United States of America, India by the Bay in Hong Kong, Confluence: Festival of India in Australia, and many more.

Our musical extravaganza, Bollywood Love Story: A Musical, continues to tour the world and has sold out shows in Austria, Germany, Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland and Egypt.

Our international festivals in India have included the bi-annual Bonjour India, a festival of France with more than 200 events across 18 cities in India and featuring over 250 artists, designers, researchers and entrepreneurs, and OzFest, a festival of Australia in India.

For more information, visit: www.teamworkarts.com