At the age of nineteen, Dom Moraes achieved instant fame as a poet with his first book of verse, A Beginning, which won the Hawthornden Prize in 1957. Since then he has published nine more collections of poems, including Serendip which won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1994. The lyrical beauty and technical virtuosity that are the hallmarks of his poetry have enthralled readers for almost five decades, drawing them into a mesmerizing world of passion, romance, fear, grief, death and renewal. Characterized by an elegant and hypnotic imagery, the surreal texture of his poems weave together a variety of themes—love and war, friendship and alienation, myth and religion. In addition to all the verse he has ever published in his distinguished career spanning fifty years, Collected Poems 1954-2004 contains a long new sequence and several other poems hitherto unpublished.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dom Moraes
Dom Moraes was born in Bombay in 1938. In 1954, he met Stephen Spender and Karl Shapiro, both famous poets who edited literary magazines. Spender published his poems in Encounter and Shapiro in Poetry Chicago. At Oxford University he received criticism and praise from W.H. Auden and Allen Tate. Still an undergraduate, he published his first book of poetry, A Beginning, which was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Literature. Reviewing the book, Edwin Muir said that it ‘had remarkable maturity and the promise of greatness’. After leaving Oxford, Dom became a well-known journalist and foreign correspondent. He covered the Eichmann trial, as well as wars in Algeria, Israel, and Vietnam. He traveled to some of the more remote and dangerous parts of the world. In later life he was employed as a literary consultant by the United Nations agency UNFPA. His early poetry showed a natural lyrical talent allied to precocious technical skill. As his perceptions deepened and his subject matter acquired more range, he developed a remarkable mastery over his art. He has published ten volumes of verse, two books of translation from Hebrew poetry, and over twenty works of prose. Dom Moraes lives in Mumbai.
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