Kedarnath Singh (left) receiving the Dayawati Modi award from former Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar in 1996; (below) some of his works. Express Archives
Professor and chairperson at the Department of Hindi Language at the Centre for Indian Languages at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Kedarnath Singh’s works include collections of poems such as Zameen Pak Rahi Hai, Baagh, Tolstoy aur Cycle, Yahan se Dekho and Abhi Bilkul Abhi. He won the Sahitya Akademi award in 1989 for his poetry collection Akaal Mein Saras and the Jnanpith Award in 2013.
He was a people’s poet. Though he didn’t write popular poetry like ghazals and shayari, his works were still popular. Even Gulzar was very fond of him. Displacement was a major subject he dealt with, delving into what happens when people are uprooted from their homeland, perhaps derived from his personal experience of having moved from Chakia village in Ballia district of eastern Uttar Pradesh to Delhi. (Prabhat Ranjan, writer and professor of Hindi, Zakir Husain Delhi College)
Among other things, he brought the fragrance of his hometown in Ballia into his work. The rural motifs and imagery he used were spectacular and almost untranslatable. He also had an impish sense of humour, which can be seen in all his work. (Mrinal Pande, author and journalist)
He was a poet who brought out the feeling of awe and astonishment through his poems. For students, with every pankti (sentence), he would take each line to great heights like a parachute. He was a poet of today’s generation. I have known him through his poems. (Vinod Kumar Shukla, author)
The quintessence of Kedarnath Singh’s poetry lies in his simple, pellucid and scintillating language. His verses are effortless and don’t pause to look for meaning. The extensive use of colloquial language makes his poetry impactful as a medium of communication and therein lies his appeal. He took the linguistic heritage of Hindi places. (Saif Mahmood, Urdu critic and Supreme Court lawyer)