EZEKIEL, NISSIM

EZEKIEL, NISSIM (1924–2004), Indian poet, critic, social commentator, and editor. Ezekiel was a member of Bombay's bene israel community. His father was a distinguished editor, professor of botany and zoology at Bombay University, and principal of a number of colleges. Nissim Ezekiel was the father of post-Independence Indian poetry. Born in Bombay (Mumbai) he studied first at Bombay University, taking his M.A. in 1947, and then at Birkbeck College, London. He later worked on The Illustrated Weekly of India (1952–54) and later headed the English department of the Bombay College of Arts, where he was professor of English and reader in American literature. Ezekiel published literary reviews and verse collections, including A Time to Change and Other Poems (1957), The Third (1958), and The Unfinished Man (1960). Some of his verse appeared in British poetry journals. He was brought up in a secular milieu and even as a child preferred the poetry of T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, and Ezra Pound to the English poetry being written in India. His poetic engagements paralleled those of Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin, and other postwar British poets but he developed his own voice marked by tenderness and irony. His use of Indian English vernacular after the 1960s gave his poetic language a rich humorous seam to draw on. Ezekiel received the Sahitya Akademi award in 1983 and the Padma-Shri, India's highest civilian honor, in 1988. (Tudor Parfitt (2nd ed.)