#  Vidyan Ravinthiran 

Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of the Humanities

*Currently accepting graduate student advisees

 

 

 



   ![Ravinthiran](/sites/g/files/omnuum1611/files/styles/hwp_4_5__320x400/public/english/files/vid_photo_1_0.jpg?itok=_GYnztun) 

 



 

 location\_on He/hisOffice: Barker Center 151 

 email <vidyanravinthiran@fas.harvard.edu> 

 Offcie Hours: by appointment

 

 



 

Education: B.A., University of Oxford (2006)  
M.A., University of Cambridge (2007)  
Ph.D., University of Oxford (2010)

Interests: Literary form; post-Romantic thought; poetry and poetics; South-Asian verse in English.

Selected Works:

**Books:** *Spontaneity and Form in Modern Prose* (forthcoming from OUP, 2021); *The Million-Petalled Flower of Being Here* (VERSE – Tarset: Bloodaxe, 2019); winner of a Northern Writers Award, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and shortlisted for the Forward Prize; *Selected Poetry and Prose of Srinivas Rayaprol*, edited with Graziano Krätli (forthcoming from Carcanet, 2019); *Selected Poetry of Arvind Krishna Mehrotra*, edited (forthcoming from NYRB Books, 2019); *Elizabeth Bishop’s Prosaic* (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2015 / paperback release, July 2017); winner of the University English Prize, as well as the Warren-Brooks Award for Literary Criticism; *Grun-tu-molani* (VERSE – Tarset: Bloodaxe, 2014); shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for First Full Collection, and the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize**.**

**Selected Essays:** ‘ “Manuelzinho”, Brazil and identity politics’, in *Reading Elizabeth Bishop: An Edinburgh Companion*, ed. Jonathan Ellis (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2019): 33-47; ‘The nature of Englishness: the hybrid poetics of Ted Hughes’, in *Ted Hughes, Nature and Culture*, ed. Neil Roberts, Mark Wormald and Terry Gifford (Cham: Palgrave, 2018): 107-23.; ‘Race, Style, and the Soul of Saul Bellow’s Prose’, *Essays in Criticism* (2016) 66 (4): 488-517; ‘Arun Kolatkar’s Description of India’, *The Journal of Commonwealth Literature* (2014) 49 (3): 359-77; ‘How James Wright Wasted His Life’, *Literary Imagination* (2014) 16 (1): 95-116; ‘The Spontaneity of Hopkins’s Journal Prose’, *The Review of English Studies* (2013) 64 (267): 838-56; ‘Dante and Shelley’s terza rima’, *Essays in Criticism* (2011) 61 (2): 155-72.

Essays for *Poetry (Chicago)* on [Jon Silkin / R.F. Langley / C.H. Sisson](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/70300/all-the-animals-in-my-poems-go-into-the-ark); [Marianne Moore and Stevie Smith](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/90643/your-thorns-are-the-best-part-of-you); [Rae Armantrout](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/92024/the-lonely-dream); [Thom Gunn](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/145986/shadows-hard-as-board); [Galway Kinnell](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/147852/trying-to-become-winged); [verse-sound](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/150028/there-must-be-something-to-say); and, for *The Poetry Review*, [A.K. Ramanujan](https://poetrysociety.org.uk/essay-at-home-or-nowhere/).

**Poems:** ‘[Snow](https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/sep/22/poem-of-the-week-snow-vidyan-ravinthiran)’ in *The Guardian*; ‘[Ceylon](https://www.thenation.com/article/ceylon/)’ in *The Nation*; ‘[As a child](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/144358/as-a-child-59bc021f29ac2)’ in *Poetry*.

I welcome conversation with students of colour, students with roots in the Global South.



 

 

 





 

 

- ## Creative Writing Workshop Topic
    
     [Poetry](/course-topic/poetry)
- ## Role
    
     [Faculty](/role/faculty)