- Amarjit Chandan. Partial Self-portrait. Lahore. 2009
Amarjit Chandan (1946, Nairobi) lives and works in London. He has published six collections of poetry, and five books of essays in Punjabi. Four of his books are also published in the Farsi script from Lahore, West Punjab.
Chandan has edited and translated over thirty anthologies of poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction by, among others, Brecht, Neruda, Ritsos, Hikmet, Vallejo, Cardenal and John Berger in Punjabi.
Chandan was one of the ten British poets selected by Andrew Motion, the Poet Laureate, for the National Poetry Day in 2001, and has participated in the Alderburgh, Ledbury and King’s Lynn poetry festivals and Poetry Parnassus, gathering of the world’s poets, South Bank London in July 2012.
English versions of his poems have appeared in England in various collections including Being Here (1995, 1999, 2005), Sonata for Four Hands prefaced by John Berger (2010); and in magazines such as Atlas, Artrage, Bazaar, Brand, Horizon Review, Critical Quarterly, Modern Poetry in Translation and Poetry Review (England), Akköy and Papirus (Turkey), Deucalion o Thessalos, Erismus, Odos Panos and Ombrela (Greece), Lettre Internationale (Romania) and Polichinelo (Brazil).
His poems have been variously anthologised and broadcast – notably in All That Mighty Heart: London Poems, Edited by Lisa Rus Spaar, University of Virginia Press, 2008; and The Best British Poetry, Edited by Sasha Dugdale, Salt, 2012.
Chandan received the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004 from the Language Department, Government of the Punjab, India; and the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006 from the Panjabis in Britain, All-Party Parliamentary Group, London and Anaad Poetry Award, India in 2009.
His short poem carved in 40-foot long stone by Eric Peever, designed by Bhajan Hunjan, both in Punjabi and its English version is installed in High Street Slough England.