Biography of Nissim Ezekiel

Nissim Ezekiel (Talkar) ( 16 December 1924 – 9 January 2004) was an Indian Jewish poet, actor, playwright, editor,  art critic. He was a foundational figure in postcolonial India's literary history, specifically for Indian Poetry in English.and He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1983 for his poetry collection, "Latter-Day Psalms", by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters.^[5] Ezekiel has been applauded for his subtle, restrained and well-crafted diction, dealing with common and mundane (simple) themes in a manner that manifests both cognitive profundity, as well as an unsentimental, realistic sensibility, that has been influential on the course of succeeding Indian English poetry. Ezekiel enriched and established Indian English language poetry through his modernist innovations and techniques, which enlarged Indian English literature, moving it beyond purely spiritual and Orientalist themes, to include a wider range of concerns and interests, including mundane familial events, individual angst, and skeptical societal introspection.

Early Life

Ezekiel was born on 16 December 1924 in Bombay (Mumbai) in Maharashtra. His father was a professor of botany at Wilson College, and his mother was principal of her own school. The Ezekiel belonged to Mumbai's Marathi-speaking Jewish community known as the Bene Israel.

In 1947, Ezekiel earned a BA in Literature from Wilson College, Mumbai, Bombay University. In 1947-48, he taught English literature and published literary articles. After dabbling in radical politics for a while, he sailed to England in November 1948. He studied philosophy at Birkbeck College, London. After three and a half years stay, Ezekiel worked his way home as a deck-scrubber aboard a ship carrying arms to Indochina.

Career

Ezekiel's first book, The Bad Day, appeared in 1952. He published another volume of poems, The deadly man in 1960. After working as an advertising copywriter and general manager of a picture frame company (1954–59), he co-founded the literary monthly Jumpo, in 1961. He became art critic of The Times of India (1964–66) and edited Poetry India (1966–67). From 1961 to 1972, he headed the English department of Mithibai College, Bombay. The Exact Name, his fifth book of poetry was published in 1965. During this period he held short-term tenure as visiting a professor at the University of Leeds (1964) and University of Pondicherry (1967). In 1969, Writers Workshop, Ezekiel^[12] published his The Damn Plays. A year later, he presented an art series of ten programmes for Indian television. In 1976, he translated Jawaharlal Nehru poetry from English to Marathi, in collaboration with Vrinda Nabar, and co-edited a fiction and poetry anthology. His poem The Night of the Scorpion is used as study material ^] in Indian and Colombian schools. Ezekiel also penned poems in ‘Indian English’   like the one based on instruction boards in his favorite Irani café. His poems are used in NCERT and ICSE English textbooks.

Nissim Ezekiel is often considered the father of Modern Indian English poetry by many critics.

He was honored with the Padmashri award by the President of India in 1988 and the Sahitya Akademi cultural award in 1983.

Editor

He edited The Indian P.E.N., the official organ of P.E.N. All-India Centre, Bombay from The Theosophy Hall, New Marine Lines, Bombay now Mumbai and encouraged poets and writers.

Death

After a prolonged battle with Alzheimer’s disease, Nissim Ezekiel died in Mumbai, on 9 January 2004 (aged 79) as a doyen of Indian English poetry.

Books by Ezekiel

1952: Time To Change
1953: Sixty poems
1956: The Discovery of India
1959: The Third
1960: The Unfinished Man
1965: The Exact Name
1974: Snakeskin and Other Poems, translations of the Marathi poet Indira Sant
1976: Hymns in Darkness
1982: Latter-Day Psalms
1989: Collected Poems 1952-88 OUP

Plays

1969: The Three Plays Kolkata: Writers Workshop, India

Do Not Call it Suicide Madras: Macmillan India, 1993.

Prose

1992: Selected Prose
Naipaul's India and mine- an essay
Editor[edit]
1965: An Emerson Readers
1969: A Joseph King Reader
1990: Another India, anthology of fiction and poetry

Poems

The Couple
Enterprise
A Time to Change
Island
For Elkana
The Professor
Soap
Marriage
In the country cott
The Paradise Flycatcher
Night of The Scorpion
Goodbye party for Miss Pushpa T.S.
Entertainment
“Background, Casually”
Poet, Lover and Birdwatcher

Appearances in the following poetry Anthologies

The Golden Treasure of Writers Workshop Poetry (2008) ed. by Rubana Huq and published by Writers Workshop, Calcutta
Ten Twentieth-Century Indian Poets (1976) ed. by R. Parthasarathy and published by Oxford University Press, New Delhi

The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets (1992) ed. by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and published by Oxford University Press, New Delhi

Further reading

R. Raj Rao, Nissim Ezekiel: The Authorized Biography (Viking, 2000)
Sanjit Mishra, The Poetic Art of Nissim Ezekiel ( Atlantic, 2001)