Alokeranjan Dasgupta

Alokeranjan Dasgupta (born 6 October 1933 in Calcutta) is a Bengali poet who is the author of over 20 books of poetry. He has translated Bengali and Santal poetry and plays into English and German, and has also translated literature from German and French into Bengali. He has also published a number of books of essays, and is well known for his distinctive prose style.

Dasgupta studied at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, and then at St. Xavier's College, the Presidency College, and finally at the University of Calcutta, obtaining a Ph.D. for his studies on the lyric in Indian poetry. He used also to be associated vigorously with the little magazines and translate the original German works into Bengali

After completing his Ph.D., Dasgupta taught comparative literature and Bengali at the Department of Comparative Literature (founded by Buddhadeva Bose) at the University of Jadavapur from 1957 through 1971, after which he went to Germany on a Humboldt Foundation Fellowship. Since 1971, he has been teaching at the faculty of the South Asia Insititute of the University of Heidelberg, Germany. He has been closely associated with the Deutsche-Indische Gessellschaft (DIG), which is a premier institution for promoting close links between India and Germany.

A poet much admired by his fellow poets and the wannabes, his poetry is known for both thematic and technical innovations. The German government has felicitated him for his contribution to bring together two different cultures together by awarding him the Goethe Prize.

Dasgupta has received many awards and honors including the Sudha Basu award from the University of Calcutta (1983), the Goethe Prize in Germany (1985), the Ananda Purashkar (1985), the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman (1985), the Rabindra Puraskar (1987), the Sahitya Akademi Award (1992) for his book of poems Marami Karat (translated as The Mystical Saw and Other Poems) and the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman (2005).