A Profile on Vijay Seshadri

April 30, 2014, by

As National Poetry Month comes to a close, we thought it would be good to profile one of the most prominent poets of our time. On April 14 poet Vijay Seshadri was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for his book 3 Sections. Seshadri becomes the first Asian American to win the Pulitzer Prize in the poetry category. We asked our resident expert Beth Lyons, Houston poet and PhD candidate at the UH Creative Writing Program, to share a little insight about Vijay Seshadri with us. 

vijay-seshadriWinner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his book 3 Sections, Seshadri is an intriguing poet due to his ability to move between the vernacular and the metaphysical, the surreal to the everyday.

Born in India, Seshadri came to the US at the age of five. He holds a BA from Oberlin College, an MFA from Columbia University and currently directs the graduate non-fiction writing program at Sarah Lawrence College. He is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Wild Kingdom (1996) and The Long Meadow (2003). The Pulitzer committee called Seshadri’s work “a compelling collection of poems that examine human consciousness, from birth to dementia, in a voice that is by turns witty and grave, compassionate and remorseless…”   Continue reading