Amarjit Chandan

Amarjit Chandan (1946, Nairobi) has published eight collections of poetry, eight volumes of selected poems on various themes, five books of essays in Punjabi and two bi-lingual collections Sonata for Four Hands prefaced by John Berger (2010) and The Parrot The Horse & The Man (2017).

His poetry has been published in Arabic, Assamese, Bengali, Brazilian-Portuguese, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Marathi, Romanian, Slovenian, Telugu, Turkish and Urdu. He has edited and translated over thirty anthologies of poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction by, among others, Brecht, Neruda, Ritsos, Hikmet, Vallejo, Cardenal and John Berger in Punjabi.

Chandan was one of the ten British poets selected by Andrew Motion, the Poet Laureate, for the National Poetry Day in 2001. He has participated in the Alderburgh, Ledbury, King’s Lynn, Winchester poetry festivals and Poetry Parnassus in London in 2012. He represented the Punjab/UK in the International Literary Festival, Didim, Turkey in July 2006, Ljubljana (Slovenia) international poetry festival in 2015, and Al-Marbed International Poetry Festival Basra Iraq in February 2017, Karachi Literary Festival in February 2018 and 6th Ó Bhéal Winter Warmer Poetry Festival, Cork City, Ireland (Nov 22nd - 25th 2018). His poems have been variously anthologised and broadcast – notably in All That Mighty Heart: London Poems, Edited by Lisa Rus Spaar, University of Virginia Press, 2008.

His short poem carved in 40-foot long stone, both in Punjabi and its English version, is installed in a public square in Slough England. Award winning filmmaker Gurvinder Singh made a 45-min film on him titled Awãzãn (Voices) in 2017. He was Poet in Residence in the University of California at Santa Barbara (January-June 2014). He was a trustee of Modern Poetry in Translation (founded by Ted Hughes).

Chandan’s poems and lyrics have been put to music by Mrityanjay Awasthi, Arieb Azhar (Islamabad), Andreas Pitsillides, Ali Aftab Saeed (Beygairat Brigade Lahore), Shrikant Shriram, Madan Gopal Singh and Saira Altaf.