EZEKIEL, Nissim (Moses) 1924-2004

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born December 16, 1924, (one source says December 24) in Bombay, India; died January 9, 2004, in Mumbai, India. Editor, educator, and author. Ezekiel was widely regarded as the leading author of English poetry writing in India. Descended from a unique community of Jewish people from Galilee who established a settlement in India after they were shipwrecked there in 150 B.C.E., Ezekiel grew up speaking English and the native Marathi tongue; his love of such poets as Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot would later lead him to compose his verses in English rather than Marathi. After graduating from Mumbai University with a master's degree in 1947, he traveled to London and studied philosophy at Birkbeck College. He returned to India in 1952, where he worked as an assistant editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India before managing a picture frame company and working as an advertising copywriter from 1954 to 1959. Next, Ezekiel founded the literary magazine Imprint in 1961, while also working as chair of the English department at Mithibai College in Mumbai from 1961 to 1972. At the same time, he wrote art criticism for the Times of India from 1964 to 1966 and was editor of Poetry India from 1966 to 1967. Although Ezekiel's decision to compose poems in English—the language of imperialist forces in the minds of Indians—was initially controversial in his native country, his poems of love, loneliness, and religion, which at times ventured into humor when he occasionally poked fun at pidgin English, soon gained wide acceptance. Among his many collections of verse are A Time to Change and Other Poems (1952), The Unfinished Man: Poems Written in 1959 (1960), Hymns in Darkness (1976), and Collected Poems 1952-1988 (1989). Ezekiel also wrote plays, translated poems from Marathi into English, and edited poetry and fiction anthologies. For his contributions to literature, he was awarded the Sahitya Akademi award in 1983 and the Padmashree in 1988, the latter being India's highest civilian award.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Poets, 7th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.

PERIODICALS

Guardian (London, England), March 9, 2004, p. 27.

ONLINE

Times of India Online,http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ (January 10, 2004), "Poet Nissim Ezekiel Passes Away."