Sujata Bhatt is an Indian poet. She is best known for her anthology Brunizem (1988). She is considered “a unique voice in contemporary poetry raising taboo issues.”
Wiki/Biography
Sujata Bhatt was born on Sunday, May 6, 1956, in Ahmedabad, Gujarat (age 67; as of 2023). Her zodiac sign is Taurus. She was born at her maternal grandparents’ house, but soon after her birth, she moved to her parents’ home in Pune. She continued her education at St. Helena School, Pune. She was born into a middle-class family and was closely related to her extended family. Her grandfather and uncle were both writers, which inspired her to become a writer herself. She was a storyteller to all her siblings, cousins, and friends. Due to the family’s financial crisis, Sujata’s father and family moved to New Orleans in the United States when she was only 5 years old. Her family stayed there for three years and returned to Pune, India, when she was 8 years old. Later, when she was 12, her family left India again and moved to Connecticut, where she continued school. She graduated from Goucher College in Baltimore. Her father wanted her to become a scientist, so in her first year of graduation she chose science, but her love for literature and poetry convinced her to study philosophy in her second year of graduation. She graduated with a double major in English and Philosophy, but studying science during her first year sparked her interest in science and led her to take many science courses. She later earned an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
family
Sujata was born into a Gujarati Brahmin family.
Parents and siblings
Sujata Bhatt’s father is a virologist and her mother is a housewife.
husband and children
Sujata married German writer Michael Augustin in 1988. They have a daughter.
Sujata Bhatt and Michael Augustin at Dickinson College
other relatives
Nanabhai Bhatt (educator)
Nanabhai Bhatt was an Indian educator, writer, thinker and Indian independence activist. He was the grandfather of Sujata Bhatt. She admired her grandfather most and wrote a poem “To Nanabai Butt” in his honor. This book was published in her first collection of poems, Brunizem (1988). Sujata Bhatt was five years old when her grandfather Nanabhai Bhatt passed away. The article was written in memory of her grandfather, who spent years in prison for helping Mahatma Gandhi. Here she talks about her admiration for her grandfather’s literary taste. A line from a poem,
One semester in college, I spent hours imagining him: a thin man with huge hands, my grandfather. In the middle of the night, in the middle of writing, between ideas, he stopped to read Tennyson, his most like”
Religion/Religious Views
Sujata Bhatt grew up practicing Hinduism, but according to her, Indian writers are not necessarily religious. Talking about her religious views in an interview, she said,
I’m interested in Hinduism because it was part of my childhood. But I should say that I am also interested in other religions. I am also very interested in Buddhism. Indian writers do not have to be religious or concerned with religion. My focus usually has to do with my childhood and people close to me who may be religious. I don’t consider myself part of any single religion. I am particularly wary of all ‘isms’ and dogma”
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Profession
Sujata wrote her first poem when she was 8 years old. She published her first book of poetry, Brunizem, in 1987. According to Sujata, most of the poems in her first collection were written when she was in her early twenties and revolve around her separation from India, her own memories and experiences in India, and the desire to unite with her motherland. Her debut novels include many poems such as “Looking for My Tongue”, “Swami Anand” and “To Ahmedabad”.
Sujata Bhatt’s first collection
She has published numerous collections, including Point No Point (1997), Augatora (2000), Monkey Shadows (1991), and The Color of Solitude (2002) . She wrote many poems that were considered ahead of their time because they dealt with topics that were considered taboo, even very personal. Her poems such as “White Asparagus” and “Need to Remember the Journey” tell the story of women’s journeys of pregnancy, childbirth and sexual desire. She has also translated Gujarati poetry into English, which is included in the Penguin Anthology of Contemporary Indian Women Poets. Her collection of poems, The Color of Loneliness, demonstrates her deep sensitivity and understanding of painting.
“Shadow of the Monkey” by Sujata Bhatt
Sujata is a visiting writer at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, a visiting scholar at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, and a poet-in-residence at the Poetry Archive in London. Her literary works have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Awards, Honors, Achievements
- In 1991 she won the Cholmondeley Award.
- In 2000, she won the Italian Trati Poetry Prize.
- In 1987, she won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asia) for her first collection of poems, Brunizem.
- In 1987 she won the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award for her debut series Brunizem.
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- In college, she studied French and German because she wanted to read works in their native languages by Spanish poet Federico García Lorca and French philosopher and playwright Jean-Paul Sartre.
- The poem “Swami Anand” from her first collection of poetry, Brunizem, was based on her own experiences with the Indian monk and writer Swami Anand.
- In an interview, discussing the impact that moving from one country to another many times throughout her life had on her poetry, she said:
I read a lot of literature in translation: writers like Lorca, Neruda, Borges, Rilke, Celan, as well as Akhmatova and Herbert – to name just a few. I am in touch with Gujarati poetry. But all the time, I felt like no one really spoke for me, that no one’s life was as strangely disconnected as mine—so I felt alone in my writing, and I felt like my writing was “out of step” with neither East nor West. Western tradition. The poem “Looking for My Tongue” (“Brunitz” and “Selected Poems”) stems from this feeling. “
- She has lived in India, Europe and the United States and traveled extensively to different countries
- After college, she worked at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and as a research assistant at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
- Her poem “Searching for My Tongue” was choreographed by Daksha Sheth and performed in 1994 by the British South Asian Youth Dance Company under the title “Tongues Untied” in nine cities in England and Scotland. In 1998, Daksha Sheth Dance Company once again performed the work of the same name at the Hong Kong Arts Festival.
- Her role models were the British writer Christina Rossetti and the British poet Walter de la Maire.
- In 2014, she participated in the modern poetry event “What if Transformation…” held at the Southbank Center in London, England.
Sujata Bhatt at Southbank Center
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education