KOCHI:As you go down the memory lane, you tend to recall many events that have happened in your life and you would try to note it down in a diary. Savithri Rajeevan, a noted Malayalam poet and short fiction writer from Thiruvananthapuram started writing poems since her childhood.
When her father passed, she was just two years old. She knew her father only by what other people told her. When she learnt her father also used to write poems, she was drawn more into poetry. Savithri says, “During my school days, I started reading and writing poetry. My teachers also taught me poems. At the age of 18, I started writing and publishing my works.”
Savithri has published a volume of short fiction and four collections of poetry, the most recent being ‘Ammaye Kulippikkumbol’ for which Savithri will be awarded the Kerala Sahitya Akademi award for poetry in Thrissur on April 11. In this work, there is a description of the deceased body, frail body, the perennially mysterious body. This particular work by her draws our attention as she describes the instances of bathing her mother.
All her works hover around different themes and she doesn’t romanticise her subjects. She makes note of the people and even the minute things in her poetry. Her ability to gaze at the body as a thing of wonder and beauty makes her poetry more effective.
Savithri has won many awards such as the first Kamala Surayya Award instituted by Kamala Surayya Trust. Her poems also deal with women’s existence and liberation. She is a skilful weaver of metaphors and she crafts her subjects from the place of clarity and obliquity at the same time. Savithri says, “My poems also deal with the conventional traditions that were followed in Kerala and the impact it created on the society.”
She holds a postgraduate degree in Malayalam literature from the University of Kerala and another from M S University, Baroda, in fine art criticism.She has taught art history at the Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady, and has held the position of the vice chairperson for the Lalithakala Akademi of Kerala. She is also one of the jury members of the Kerala State Film Award jury 2009.
She is currently an advisory board member of the Central Sahitya Akademi for Malayalam. Besides being a poet and short fiction writer, Savithri is also an artist and has held many solo and group exhibitions.