Meena Kandasamy

Ilavenil Meena Kandasamy (born October 12, 1984) is an Indian poet, fiction writer, translator and activist from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.

Meena published two collections of poetry, Touch (2006) and Ms. Militancy (2010). From 2001 to 2002, she edited The Dalit, a bi-monthly alternative English magazine of the Dalit Media Network.

She represented India at the University of Iowa's International Writing Program and was a Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow at the University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom. She writes columns for platforms including Outlook India and The Hindu.

Early life and education Born in 1984 to Tamil parents, both university professors, she developed an early interest in poetry, and later adopted the name Meena. She completed a Doctorate of Philosophy in Socio-linguistics from Anna University, Chennai. and began translating books by Dalit writers and leaders into English.

Professional career

As a writer, Meena's focus was mainly on caste annihilation, feminism and linguistic identity. She says, "Poetry is not caught up within larger structures that pressure you to adopt a certain set of practices while you present your ideas in the way that academic language is," and thus, prefers to use it for her activism. One of her first collections, Touch, was published in August 2006, with a foreword by Kamala Das.

Touch was criticised for its English language errors, though its challenging themes were described as "interesting". Ms. Militancy was described as an improvement in her use of the English language but "disastrous, if not worse" in terms of themes and content. In an interview with Sampsonia Way Magazine, Meena said: "My poetry is naked, my poetry is in tears, my poetry screams in anger, my poetry writhes in pain. My poetry smells of blood, my poetry salutes sacrifice. My poetry speaks like my people, my poetry speaks for my people." The Little Magazine, Kavya Bharati, Indian Literature, Poetry International Web, Muse India, Quarterly Literary Review, Outlook, Tehelka and The New Indian Express. She was also invited to participate in the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa in 2009

She co-authored AYYANKALI: A Dalit leader of Organic Protest, a biography of Ayyankali, a dalit leader in Kerala. The foreword was written by Kancha Ilaiah). Meena was shortlisted among 21 short fiction women writers aged less than 40 from South Asia for an anthology published by Zubaan Books, New Delhi. In 2014, she published a novel about the Kilvenmani massacre titled The Gypsy Goddess, influenced by the figure of Kurathi Amman, her "ancestral goddess". From January 2013, she began working on a book titled Caste and the City of Nine Gates, her first non-fiction work.

She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022.

As activist Meena works closely with issues of caste and gender and how society puts people into stereotypical roles on the basis of these categories. She has faced threats for her fearless criticism of the Hindu society, to which she says: "This threat of violence shouldn't dictate what you are going to write or hinder you in any manner." Meena attended the festival and spoke in support of it. She faced incessant abuse online as a result. The Network of Women in Media India (NWMI) released a press statement condemning the attack on her.

As translator Meena has translated prose and poetry from Tamil. She has translated the work of Periyar E. V. Ramasamy, Thol. Thirumavalavan and Tamil Eelam writers such as Kasi Anandan, Cheran and VIS Jayapalan into English.

As actor Meena made her acting debut in the 2014 Malayalam film Oraalppokkam. It was the first online crowdfunded independent Malayalam feature film.

Awards Hermann Kesten Prize (2022) by PEN Centre Germany.

Published works Poetry

Novels

Non-Fiction

Translations