Ashok Vajpeyi (tr. Rahul Soni)

Ashok Vajpeyi is a Hindi poet-critic with fifteen books of Hindi poetry to his credit. He has published many volumes of criticism, in both Hindi and English, on poetry, literature, the visual arts and Indian classical music. Book-length translations of his poetry have appeared in French, Polish, German, English, Bengali, Marathi, Oriya, Gujrati, Urdu and Rajasthani. A recipient of the Sahitya Akademi award (1994), Dayavati Kavi Shekhar Samman (1994) and Kabir Samman (2006), he has also been decorated by the President of the Republic of Poland with the outstanding national award 'The Officer's Cross of Merit of the Republic of Poland' (2004), and by the French government with the award of 'Officier De L'Ordre Des Arts Et Des Lettres' (2005). A major institution-builder and a cultural activist, he lives in Delhi after retiring from the civil service. Rahul Soni is a writer, editor and translator. He has edited Home from a Distance (Pratilipi Books, 2011), an anthology of Hindi poetry in English translation, and translated Magadh by Shrikant Verma (Almost Island Books, 2013) and The Roof Beneath their Feet by Geetanjali Shree (HarperCollins India, 2013). He lives in India.