S Murali

Dr. Sivaramakrishnan Murali is a poet, writer, painter and critic, and a specialist in Indian aesthetics and literary theory. He received his PhD from the University of Kerala (1990).^[1]

Biography

Dr S. Murali started writing at a very young age, drawing suitable inspiration from his ardent enthusiasm for natural history, especially ornithology, and his exceptional talent for sketching and painting. His early poems are replete with imagery of nature: animals and birds, mountains and forests, the sea and the sky, all find their place in his work alongside the human. He loves to travel and sketch people and places. His earliest significant poem – Night Heron—appeared in Chandrabhaga, and the poet Jayanta Mahapatra noted it mainly for its singular appeal and original voice. Another longer poem Ganga also found a place in Chandrabhaga in the early eighties. From then onwards Murali’s poems have appeared in many reputed journals and periodicals. Whatever his other preoccupations he has been writing poetry fairly regularly.

Murali’s first volume of poems Night Heron: Poems and Sketches appeared in 1998. [Calcutta: The Writers Workshop, 1998] Conversations with Children (2005) and Earth Signs (2006) followed.

In her full length review of these poems (World Literature in Review) Syamala Narayan writes: His first book of verse, Night Heron (1998) had some drawings. Conversations with Children^{[dead link]} (2005) his second collection, had no illustrations but was distinguished by poems featuring characters from the Mahabharata like Ekalavya, Amba, Karna, and Krishna. Earth Signs^[2] is profusely illustrated, with the poet’s line drawings adorning almost every page. The collection reveals the naturalist in Murali; it also contains three poems written in Gotha, Germany in 1998.
On the forthcoming Volume: The East Facing Shop : What marks out these poems are their genuineness in feeling and form—They stand testimony to a life lived from the inside, a life struggling to be relieved of the burdens of a past and a future equally alike, a sensitive will to be uninhibited by regret, remorse and misgivings. They are definitely poems from India, but they would communicate with any sahrdaya in any part of the world. They are set forth in a language free from any jargon and technical terminology. The inner and the outer aspects of a human’s being are the territory that these experiences tread. Poems like these are ample proof that the poetry of the world is never dead—strong feelings and emotions can still be felt deep in our inner being!

S MURALI is also a painter and critic—a specialist in Indian aesthetics and literary theory. With a language skill par excellence, he received his PhD from the University of Kerala (1990) and is a scholar of national repute deeply concerned with indigenous values and environmental issues. His book The Mantra of Vision: An Overview of Sri Aurobindo’s Aesthetics (Delhi: B R, 1997) has come to be recognized as a valuable contribution to the study of Indian poetics and comparative aesthetics. He has also authored a collection of critical essays on area studies, South Indian Studies (1998) and three volumes of poems and sketches, His paintings have gone on display at several major exhibitions in India and abroad. He has authored numerous articles on art, literature, and ideas in journals of international repute. He has also coordinated seminars and conferences in the field of literature, eco-aesthetics, eco-criticism, Sri Aurobindo's writings^[3] literary theory, postmodernism and culture studies. He has participated in significant international conferences in Jamaica, Spain, Taiwan, Austria and Brussels,^[4] and lectured in the University of Salamanca, Valladolid, and Extremadura in Spain and the University of Umea in Sweden. He has held two solo exhibitions of his works in Germany and many in India. Dr Murali has as much involvement with nature and environment as with painting and poetry. Currently he is Professor and Head of the Department of English, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry, India. He is a member of the scientific committee of English Studies, University of Valladolid, Spain. He was also a Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti, New Delhi and an Associate of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He is member and coordinator of research of the Herman Hesse Society of India.

Dr S Murali is the founder President of ASLE India (Association for the Study of Literature and Environment). He has also offered courses for exchange students in Indian Art History and Aesthetics. Further he has designed and introduced an interdisciplinary course called Green Voices: Literature and the Environment. Dr Murali has been awarded a Fulbright Postdoctoral Travel Grant to teach and do research in the University of Nevada at Reno(2006–07).He was invited to read his poems as part of the inauguration of the International Conference on Poetic Ecologies, held in the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, in May 2008. Murali’s sculpture (cast in fibre) of Prof CD Narasimhaiah now adorns the conference hall of Dhvanyaloka, Mysore.

Publications

Murali’s academic publications include:

• Figuring the Female: Women’s Discourse, Art and Literature (New Delhi: The Woman Press, 2005)
• Tradition and Terrain: Aesthetic Continuities. New Delhi: B R Publishers, 2005 (both co-authored with Usha V. T.)
• Nature and Human Nature: Literature, Ecology, Meaning (New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2008)
• Image and Event: The Dynamics of Representation ( forthcoming)
• Learning to Think Like Myself (essays—forthcoming)
• Ecological Criticism: Application and Possibilities (co-edited with Ujjawal Jana)( forthcoming)
• Cries and Whispers: Nature, value, Education (Essays—forthcoming)

References

1. ^ http://www.museindia.com/mdisedit.asp?id=1052
2. ^ http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-34753775_ITM
3. ^ http://books.google.co.in/books?id=RbQ5Omy1vLsC&pg=PA93&lpg=PA93&dq=s+murali+ecocriticism&source=bl&ots=b0TBTFieY3&sig=MasBSpkyNRlfT-8l8WJSsyGHzuU&hl=en&ei=BJ31SuC2HZOqswOqoqDwCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CBcQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=s%20murali%20ecocriticism&f=false
4. ^ http://www.ulb.ac.be/philo/dll/colloques/poetic_ecologies/conference.html

External links

• The Journal of Commonwealth Literature http://jcl.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/41/4/91
• http://www.angelfire.com/art3/murali/s_muralis_page/
• http://www.pondiuni.edu.in/dept_pages/dept_english.htm
• http://www.timesofpondicherry.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=36&Itemid=79
• http://www.pondiuni.edu.in/dept_pages/dept_english.htm
• http://www.countercurrents.org/murali310807.htm
• http://muralisart.blogspot.com/
• http://samyukta.info/archives/vol_1_1/poetry/murali%20s/

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