Manohar Shetty

Manohar Shetty (born 1953) is an Indian poet, writer, and literary editor based in Goa, India. He is considered as one of the prominent Indian poets writing in the English language.

He has been a Senior Fellow with the Sahitya Akademi, the Indian academy of arts and letters, and his work is found in several anthologies, including The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets edited by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and anthologies edited by Eunice de Souza, Vilas Sarang and Jeet Thayil.

Early life Manohar Shetty was born in Bombay and educated in Panchgani. He graduated from Bombay University in 1974 and began working as a journalist.

Critical perspectives Shetty's poetry is seen as being an integral part of the "chronology of modern Indian English poetry." His poetry is described as revelling in "the celebration of the sombre" and being filled with "sepulchral images" while their "mood is predominantly one of helplessness and lethargy." K. Narayana Chandran of the University of Hyderabad, while reviewing Shetty's Domestic Creatures in World Literature Today, comments: "To be able to write magnificently about the little world one knows – and what passionate care all this involves – is no small gift for a poet. Manohar Shetty is an eminently gifted poet in this sense."

In another review of Shetty's A Guarded Space, in 1982 in the same journal (World Literature Today), S. Amanuddin is more critical. New Delhi-based magazine Caravan described Shetty as "something of a rarity among Indian English poets of his and preceding generations, who have tended to be rather less consistent in their output."

Poetry volumes As of 2017, he has published eight volumes of poetry. They are:

Morning Light. Delhi: Copper Coin, 2016 Personal Effects, Delhi: Copper Coin, 2015 Living Rooms, New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2014 Creatures Great and Small, Delhi: Copper Coin, 2014 Body Language, Mumbai: Poetrywala, 2012 Domestic Creatures: Poems, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994 Borrowed Time, Bombay: Praxis, 1988 A Guarded Space, Bombay: Newground, 1981

Books edited Ferry Crossing – Short Stories from Goa, New Delhi: Penguin India, 1998 Goa Travels, Being the Accounts of Travellers to Goa from the 16th to the 20th Century, New Delhi: Rupa, 2014 of his experiences with alcohol in the book House Spirit: Drinking in India – Stories, Essays, Poems (Speaking Tiger Books).