MY DIGITAL �ALBUM

SUBMITTED BY

SWATHY R.BAHU

SECOND SEMINAR B.Ed

ENGLISH

SREE NARAYANA GURU KRiPA Bed COLLEGE

POTHENCODE

SUBMITTED TO �DHANYA MA’AM�ENGLISH DEPARTMENT�SREE NARAYANA GURU KRIPA B.Ed COLLEGE�POTHENCODE

GIEVE PATEL

INTRODUCTION

Gieve Patel (born 18 August 1940) is an Indian Parsi poet, playwright, painter, as well as a practising physician. He belongs to a group of writers who have subscribed themselves to the 'Green Movement' which is involved in an effort to protect the environment. His poems speak of deep concerns for nature and expose man's cruelty to it. His works include poems, How Do You Withstand (1966), Body (1976) and Mirrored Mirroring (1991). He has also written three plays, Titled Princess, Savaska and Mr. Behram.

EARLY LIFE

Patel was born in 1940 in Mumbai. His Parsi parents were from a small village called Nargol in southern Gujarat. His father was a dentist and his mother was a doctor's daughter. He started his education at St. Xavier's High School and Grant Medical College, Mumbai. He lives in Mumbai where he is a general practitioner.

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CAREER

Patel's poetical works include Poems, first launched by Nissim Ezekiel, followed by How Do You Withstand, Body and Mirrored Mirroring. His plays include Princes, Savaksa and Mr Behram. A common theme throughout Patel's work is the relationship between the Parsi community to which he belongs and their feudal relationship with the tribal Warlis.

He held his first art show in Mumbai in 1966, and went on to have several major exhibitions in India and abroad. Patel participated in the Menton Biemale, France in 1976. India, Myth and Reality, Oxford in 1982; Contemporary Indian Art, Royal Academy, London 1982. Patel belongs to an avant-garde grouping of artists based in Bombay and Baroda.

Patel has also exhibited for Contemporary Indian Art,

Grey Art Gallery, New York City, 1985, Indian Art from the Herwitz collection Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts, 1985 and Coups de Coeur Geneva, 1987.

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He has been conducting a poetry workshop in Rishi Valley School for more than a decade. He edited a collection of poetry which was published in 2006. His poetry is included in Anthology of Contemporary Indian Poetry (BigBridge, United States). One of his Poems "Licence" from the collection How do you Withstand is included in the anthology Confronting Love edited by Arundhati Subramanyam and Jerry Pinto.�He has been translating poems from the 17th century Gujarati poet Akho into English.�

PUBLISHED WORK’S

• University.
• Poems. Nissim Ezekial 1966.
• How Do You Withstand, Body. Clearing House, (1976 ).
• Mirrored, Mirroring. Oxford University Press, 1991.
• On Killing a Tree.

�Famous Work�ON KILLING A TREE

• The poem ‘On Killing a Tree’ is like an instruction manual for killing a tree. It tells the reader that trees are living beings. They are not cut but killed properly by uprooting the roots that are inserted deeply in the soil. Through the poem, the poet teaches us many lessons. Firstly, the poem illustrates the courage and strength of trees, through which it teaches us to be strong and determined. Then, it points out that evils are just like roots. They are deeply rooted within us and even if we feel we have vanquished them, it suddenly appears. Therefore, to kill an evil we must put in our best efforts and uproot it. Thirdly, it teaches us that we must bring all our work to a proper end. Lastly, it requests us not to cut trees that sustain our lives.

Some Reviews

 I cannot think of a better phrase to describe the central theme of Gieve Patel’s poetry, available to us now in a single, slim half-century-spanning volume, as arresting as it is compact. The flesh of the world. Something more than conventional carnality: the ambivalent intimation of a common substance across the human and the non-human, the living and the inanimate. A substance that both exceeds the human and yet becomes available to us only through the most unblinking human attention. Such is the sensibility that gives us these astonishing poems.

-Maurice Merleau

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ACHIEVEMENTS

• He has been awarded the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in 1984; the Rockefeller Fellowship in 1992, and been the C.R. Parekh Writer-in-Residence, Norman Foundation Grant at the University of Pennsylvania, in 2003. The artist lives and works in Mumbai.