Abhay Kumar

Abhay was born and raised at Rajgir in Nalanda district of Bihar. He studied at Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University. He joined the Indian Foreign Service in 2003. He studied Russian language, history and literature at the Moscow State University, U.S. foreign policy at George Washington University. He speaks Hindi, English, Russian, Nepali and Portuguese.

Diplomat

Kumar is an Indian Foreign Service officer and has served in positions at the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) of the government of India and at the Indian missions and posts abroad in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kathmandu. At the MEA headquarters in New Delhi he served as the Under Secretary Digital diplomacy and sent the first tweet after setting up official Twitter account of the Ministry of External Affairs of India in 2010. He served as the spokesperson of the Embassy of India, Kathmandu from 2012-2015. He was appointed as the Director of the Nehru Centre, London in March 2015. Subsequently, he was appointed as India's Deputy High Commissioner to Australia in August 2015. He currently serves as India´s Deputy Chief of Mission at the Indian Embassy in Brasilia, Brazil. He has been appointed as India's next Ambassador to Madagascar. He proposed celebration of the International Day of Diplomats on the United Nations Daywhich was celebrated in Brasilia for the first time on 24th Oct, 2017 with the participation of diplomats from several countries.

He was also assistant editor of India Perspectives, a monthly magazine published by the Ministry of External Affairs in 17 languages from September 2011 to July 2012.

Poet

Abhay K, Fady Joudah, Lionel Fogarty, Sadaf Saz, Arjun Deo Charan, Ashok Bajpai at JLF 2015

Abhay Kumar's first book titled River Valley to Silicon Valley(2007) was a memoir that also contained his first poem, 'Soul Song'. He has published a number of collections of his poetry. The Eight-Eyed Lord of Kathmandu (2017) is a collection of poems on the UNESCO World Heritage sites, festivals, historical personalities, landscapes and prominent places of Nepal written during his stay in Nepal from 2012-2015. It was translated into Nepali as Jatra The Seduction of Delhi became a bestselling poetry book after its launch in January 2015 and was shortlisted for Muse India-Satish Verma Young Writer Award 2015. The poet, Jayanta Mahapatra, thinks "qualities of love, tenderness and compassion set Abhay K's work apart from much of the general run of current poetics."

Abhay K and Eleanor Catton at JLF 2015

Abhay Kumar's poems have appeared in several magazines and literary journals including Poetry Salzburg Review, The Asia Literary Review, Gargoyle, and The Caravan. His poems have also been included in a number of anthologies including A Poem A Day edited by Gulzar (Harper Collins|2018), The Younger Indian Poets edited by Sudeep Sen(Sahitya Akademi|2018), 100 Great Indian Poems (Bloomsbury|2018), and The Himalayan Arc edited by Namita Gokhale (Harper Collins|2018). Abhay has read his poems at major poetry and literature festivals across the globe.

In 2017, CAPITALS, an anthology of poems on the capital cities of the world edited by Abhay K., was released. It brought poets together from across the planet and included contributions from Derek Walcott, Vijay Seshadri, George Szirtes, and Ruth Padel among other prominent poets from 185 countries. 100 Great Indian Poems (2018) is an anthology of Indian poetry edited by Abhay K. covering over 3000 years of Indian poetry and 28 Indian languages. It has been translated into Irish by poet Gabriel Rosenstock and Portuguese.

In 2013 Abhay released Earth Anthem, a song intended as an anthem for the planet Earth, written by him in eight languages including six official UN languages — Arabic, Chinese, French, English, Russian and Spanish — as well as Hindi and Nepali. It was set to music by Sapan Ghimire and sung by Shreya Sotang from Nepal. It has been translated into 30 languages including Tamil, Russian, and Chinese and has received acclaim. On World Environment Day 2017, Abhay K's Earth Anthem composed by L. Subramaniam and sung by Kavita Krishnamurthy was released in Brasilia. Abhay also wrote an anthem for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in an attempt to foster South Asian consciousness and bring the member states of SAARC together. It has spurred discussions on the need for an official SAARC Anthem. He is the first Indian poet invited to record his poems at the Library of Congress.

Art

Recipients of SAARC Literary Award 2013

Abhay's art work focus on planetary consciousness. He has exhibited his paintings in St. Petersburg, Paris and New Delhi. His art has received good reviews. Poetry-paintings of Abhay K and Italian artist Tarshito exhibited at the National Academy of Art, New Delhi highlight Delhi's glorious past.

• 2012: 1st Prize by the Amity School of Business, Noida, India for the case study Digital Revolution and Business at the 8th Renvoi, an International Management Case Study Competition
• 2012: Nominated for the Pushcart Prize
• 2013: SAARC Literary Award - Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature
• 2014: Asia-Pacific Excellence Award

Poetry Collections

• Enigmatic Love (Bookwell|2009)
• Fallen Leaves of Autumn (ArtXpress|2010)
• Candling the Light(Yash|2011)
• Remains (HarAnand|2012)
• The Seduction of Delhi(Bloomsbury|2014)
• The Eight-eyed Lord of Kathmandu (Bloomsbury India |2018) & (The Onslaught Press, Oxford & Paris|2017)
• The Prophecy of Brasilia (Bilingual edition in English and Portuguese| GaNa, Brazil|2018)

Translations

• Uttering Her Name by Gabriel Rosenstock (Salmon Ireland)into Hindi|2015

Edited

• Anthology of Contemporary Indian English Poetry (Enchanting Verses Literary Review|2016)
• CAPITALS (Bloomsbury|2017)
• 100 Great Indian Poems (Bloomsbury|2017)

Non-fiction

• River Valley to Silicon Valley (Bookwell|2007), republished as Becoming A Civil Servant (Kalinjar|2015)
• 10 Questions of the Soul (2010)
• Colours of Soul (Cvet Dushi) (2011)