K. Satchidanandan is a leading Indian poet He is also perhaps the most translated of contemporary Indian poets, having 32 collections of translation in 19 languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, English, Irish, French, German and Italian, besides all the major Indian languages. He has 24 collections of poetry, four books of travel, a full length play and a collection of one-act plays, two books for children and several collections of critical essays, including five books in English on Indian literature besides several collections of world poetry in translation. He has been a Professor of English, and also the chief executive of the Sahitya Akademi, the Director of the School of Translation Studies, Indira Gandhi Open University, Delhi and National Fellow, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He is a Fellow of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi and has won 52 literary awards from different states and countries, including the Sahitya Akademi award, India-Poland Friendship Medal from the Government of Poland, Knighthood from the Government of Italy and World Prize for Poetry for Peace from the Government of the UAE. His recent collections in English include While I Write, Misplaced Objects and Other Poems, The Missing Rib: Collected Poems, Not Only the Oceans, Questions from the Dead and The Whispering Tree: Poems of Love and Longing.