Hemant Mohapatra wins the 2010 Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize

Hemant Mohapatra has won the 2nd Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize. Congratulations, Hemant!

I've registered the anxiety to know the results for the last several days; many folks turn up on this blog searching for 'winner srinivas rayaprol prize'. You search ends here now, people.

Here's the announcement via mail from Aparna Rayaprol:

Twenty-nine year old Hemant Mohapatra has been chosen the winner of the second Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize.  An engineer by profession, Hemant Mohapatra studied at IIT-Bombay and University of Cincinnati.  With a childhood surrounded by the Himalayan and Shivalik ranges, he started writing poetry at the age of 18. 

A winner of the Harper Collins (India) Poetry Prize for 2008-2009, Mohapatra was also on the shortlist for the TFA Creative Writing Awards, 2010.  He has published his poetry in various literary journals of repute. 

The Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize was instituted by the Hyderabad-based Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust to recognize excellence in poetry written in English and is jointly administered by the Department of English, University of Hyderabad.  This year a distinguished jury, consisting of the poet Jeet Thayil, Prof. Sailaja Pingali and Prof. Sachidananda Mohanty of the University of Hyderabad, selected Hemant Mohapatra among 150 entries received from poets in the age group of 20-40 years all over the country.  Others shortlisted by the jury include: Krishnakumar Sankaran, Arka Mukhopadhyay, and Deepika Arwind.

The Srinivas Rayaprol Literary Trust was started in the year 2000 to perpetuate the memory of the poet, Srinivas Rayaprol (a.k.a. R.S. Marthandam, 1925-1998), who was one of the significant personalities of the early Indian English Poetry in India.  The inaugural prize was awarded last year to young Aditi Machado, who is currently in the United States for a creative writing course.

The award, consisting of a citation and Rs.10,000 cash prize, will be presented to the winner by well-known poet Keki Daruwalla in January at a literary event in Hyderabad.

Some of Hemant's poems can be found here and here.