K. Satchidanandan, a pioneering modern Indian poet, critic, editor, translator, academic and literary organizer, was the chief executive of India’s national Academy of Letters. He has authored twenty-one collections of poetry, sixteen books of translations of world poetry and twenty-one works of literary criticism in Malayalam and English besides plays and travelogues. He has won twenty- five awards for his literary contribution from diverse institutions in India and abroad and is a Fellow of the Kerala Academy of Literature. He has won the Knighthood of Merit from the government of Italy and an India-Poland Friendship Medal from the government of Poland. Representative collections of his poetry have appeared in eighteen languages. He has lectured and read and his work has appeared in anthologies of poetry in several countries across the world from USA to Australia.