Prabal Kumar Basu

Prabal received much fame and accolades, along with the West Bengal Bangla Akademy Puraskar, for his poetry book Jamon Kore Gaichhe Akash in 2005. In this same year he was invited to the Third International Poetry Festival in Wellington, New Zealand. The festival was a confluence of poets from across the globe and Prabal developed a connection with other International poets. This greatly helped him acquire an international diction and world viewpoint which is evident in his later works. A crowning achievement was the Writers and Artists In-Residency Programme 2017’ where he was the invited guest of the then President of India, Dr. Pranab Mukherjee. He stayed at the Rashtrapati Bhawan for two weeks and had multiple cultural exchanges with the President himself.

In 2002, Prabal edited Signposts: 50 years of Bengali Poetry since Independence. Since then, the book has become one of the most well-read and talked about books on Bengali poetry in English. In 2003 Prabal was instrumental in setting up the Kolkata International Foundation for Art, Literature and Culture, along with famous artists, theatre personalities, poets and others, with the objective was to set up a multi-cultural centre in Kolkata.

It was in 2002, when Yapanchitra, a little magazine for literature, art and culture was published (editor: Barnali Roy), Prabal became its mentor. He was not merely a contributor but was responsible for the magazine’s creative ideas and execution processes. In 2006, Prabal edited the international poetry volume for Yapanchitra. Later when Yapanchitra Foundation was established as a platform for young poets Prabal became the editor of Yapanchitra in the year 2017.

Prabal started writing poetry from his college days and his first poetry book Tumi i Pratham was published immediately after he graduated. This brought him critical acclaim and he was awarded Gaurishankar Bhattacharjee Memorial Award. He also dabbled in theatre in college, especially verse dramas, and in 1981, he formed a cultural organization named Adhunik Sanskritik Parishad, which used to stage ballet forms of poems.

Prabal Kumar Basu was born on 21 September 1960, in Kolkata (erstwhile Calcutta) to Debkumar Basu and Chhanda Basu. Debkumar Basu was quite well known and active in the Bengali cultural sphere and most of his friends and acquaintances were prominent writers, poets, artists and others. Young Prabal grew up in an environment where the arts featured prominently as a part of daily life. The seeds of his literary aspirations were sowed at an early age.