Attipate Krishnaswami Ramanujan (16 March 1929 – 13 July 1993) or A.K. Ramanujan was an Indian poet, translator, folklorist, and philologist. He was born in Mysore, India. He earned degrees at the University of Mysore and Deccan College in Pune and a PhD from Indiana University. Ramanujan was a linguist and 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.
His poetry is known for its exploration of an immigrant life along with the reminiscence and preservation of the Indian culture. Not surprisingly, hybridity and transculturation feature prominently in collections such as Second Sight (1986), Selected Poems (1976), and The Striders (1966). The Collected Poems of A.K. Ramanujan (1995) received a Sahitya Akademi Award after the author’s death.
His works of scholarship include A Flowering Tree and Other Oral Tales from India (1997), Folktales from India: A Selection of Oral Tales from Twenty-Two Languages (1991), and The Interior Landscape: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology (1967).
For much of his career, Ramanujan taught at the University of Chicago, where he helped develop the South Asian studies program. In 1976, the Indian government honoured him with the title Padma Shri, the fourth-highest civilian award in the country. Ramanujan also received a MacArthur Fellowship.
Given below are curated poems from his book The Collected Poems of A.K. Ramanujan (1995). Click on the titles below to read his poems.
A River Astronomer Elements of Composition Extended Family Prayers To Lord Murugan Snakes