Poets

Joy Goswami is an Indian poet. Goswami writes in Bengali and is widely considered as one of the most important Bengali poets of his generation.

Biography

Joy was born in Kolkata. His family moved to Ranaghat, West Bengal shortly after and he has lived there ever since. Goswami was introduced to and encouraged with respect to poetry by his father, a well-known political worker in the area. He lost his father at the age of six, after which the family was sustained by his mother, a teacher. She died in 1984. Goswami's formal education stopped early, in grade eleven. By this time he was already writing poetry. After a long period of writing in little magazines and periodicals, his writing was finally published in the influential Desh Patrika. This brought his immediate critical acclaim and so long after his first poetry collection was published, named Christmas o Sheeter Sonnetguchchho (Sonets of Christmas and Winter). He has received the Anita-Sunil Basu Award from the Bangla Academy, Govt of W.B. the prestigious Ananda Purashkar in 1989 for Ghumiyechho, Jhaupata? (Have you slept, Pine leaf?) and the Sahitya Akademi Award, 2000 for his anthology Pagali tomara sange(With you, O crazy girl).