Poet Priya Verma receives Bharat Bhushan Agarwal Award 2024

New Delhi, Aug 2 (PTI) Hindi poet Priya Verma has received the Bharat Bhushan Agarwal Award for 2024 for her first poetry collection "Swapn Se Bahar Paon", organiser Raza Foundation announced on Friday.

Talking about Verma's poetry collection, selector and critic Madan Soni said her poems capture "very complex human experiences".

"...especially the simple but often unnoticed complexity of man-woman relationships, in an equally synthetic craft. Her feminine voice is very clear, but these voices are not filled with rhetoric of accusation but of deep compassion, pain and empathy. They transcend the immediacy of the context and attempt to capture the experience in the light of its timelessness and universality," Soni said in a statement.

He added that the poet has focused on love and drawn out its "subtle nuances and folds and tries to see it as the ultimate meaning of human existence".

"She struggles and grapples, cross-examines, but not only with the world but also with herself. 'Swapn Se Bahar Paon' rests on that trembling border, where imagination and reality, feeling and thought, inner and outer, many entities like 'I and you' overlap and end," Soni added.

Born on August 3, 1919, Agarwal came to be known as a leading poet and literary commentator. He was one of the poets included in Sachchidananda Vatsyayan's poetry anthology "Tar Saptak". Apart from his collection of poetry "Utna Vah Suraj Hai", for which he received the Sahitya Akademi Award for 1978, Agarwal's noted works include "Jaagte Raho", "Muktimarg", "O Aprastut Man" and "Ek Utha Hua Hath".

The award was established by Agarwal's family in 1979 to commemorate his contribution to the world of literature by recognising a contemporary young poet's best poem in that year. Since 2020, the award is being given by the Raza Foundation to a young poet for their first poetry collection.

Previously, the award has been given to the likes of Gagan Gill (1985), Teji Grover (1990), Badri Narayan (1991), Sanjay Kundan (1998), Yatindra Mishra (2005), and Geet Chaturvedi (2007).

Last year, Devesh Path Sariya received the award for his poetry collection "Nooh ki Naav". PTI MAH MAH BK BK