Puviarasu

Puviarasu (or Puviyarasu; 1930 – 30 June 2026) was an Indian Tamil poet and translator from Tamil Nadu.

Life and career Puviyarasu was born in a Lingavanayakkanputhur village near Udumalpet in 1930. His birth name was S. Jagannathan. Puviyarasu is the Tamil translation of the Sanskritic "Jagannathan". His family moved to and settled in Coimbatore. He obtained his intermediate degree from Government Arts College, Coimbatore and his Tamil Vidwan degree from Perur Tamil College. He worked as a Tamil teacher for more than thirty years. He first started publishing in 1952. He was a Marxist by political orientation and was an opponent of Dravidian parties. He was imprisoned for his participation in agitations for making Tamil the administrative language of Tamil Nadu and the border agitations. He was one of the founders of the short-lived Vanambadi literary movement. In his literary career he published more than 80 books. He also translated the works of Shakespeare, Khalil Gibran, Omar Khayyam, Osho, Dostoevsky and Rabindranath Tagore into Tamil. Some of his poems have been translated into English, Russian, Hungarian, Malayalam, Kannada, Hindi and Sinhalese. In 2007 he won the Sahitya Akademi Translation Prize for his poem Puratchikaaran – translation of Kazi Nazrul Islam's The Revolutionary. In 2010, he was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for Tamil for his poetry collection Kaioppam (lit. The Signature). The charitable trust Puviyarasu Tamil Valarchi Mayyam (started for training Tamil teachers properly) has been named after him. He lived in Coimbatore.

Puviarasu died on 30 June 2026, at the age of 96.

Partial bibliography Poetry Kaioppam Ettu thisai kaatru Kavithaikenna Kelvi Meendum zen kavithaikal Idu dhan Vaasippu

Translations The Book of Mirdad by Mikha'il Na'ima The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky Hamlet Othello Romeo and Juliet

Drama Manidhan Moondram pirai

Awards and recognitions Sahitya Akademi Translation Prize (2007) Kalaignar Porkizhi Award (2008) Sahitya Akademi Award for Tamil (2009) Sahitya Puraskar Award from Kerala Cultural Centre

Books His books are available as ebooks at Pustaka.