Poets

Arun Balkrishna Kolatkar (Marathi: अरुण बालकृष्ण कोलटकर) was a poet from Maharashtra, India. Writing in both Marathi and English, his poems found humor in many everyday matters. His poetry had an influence on modern Marathi poets. His first book of English poetry, Jejuri, is a collection 31 poems pertaining to a visit of his to a religious place with the same name Jejuri in Maharashtra; the book won Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1977. His Marathi verse collection Bhijki Vahi won a Sahitya Akademi Award in 2005. His Collected Poems in English, edited by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, was published in Britain by Bloodaxe Books in 2010.

Trained as an artist from the J. J. School of Art, he was also a noted graphics designer, with many awards for his work.

Life

Kolatkar was born in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, where his father Tatya Kolatkar was an officer in the Education department. He lived in a traditional patriarchal Hindu extended family, along with his uncle's family. He has described their nine-room house as
"a house of cards. Five in a row on the ground, topped by three on the first, and one on the second floor."

The floors had to be
"plastered with cowdung every week".

He attended Rajaram High School in Kolhapur, where Marathi was the medium of instruction. After graduation in 1949, much against his father's wishes, he joined the J J School of art, where his childhood friend Baburao Sadwelkar was enrolled.

His college years saw a "mysterious phase..