Vegunta Mohan Prasad

Vegunta Mohan Prasad was a well-known Telugu poet. He was born in Lam of Guntur district, Andra Pradesh. After completing his schooling, he pursued graduation with a B.A. from Andra Christian College. He then pursued a master’s degree in English from the Banaras Hindu University. He obtained a PGDTE from the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages. He began his career as an educator in English Literature. He became the head of the English department at P.B. Siddhartha College of Arts and Science in Vijayawada. After his retirement, he became the director of Anusrijana, the translation wing of Dravidian University. He organized translations of about a hundred classic works from the regional languages into English.

His creativity ,and great poetic energy lead to publishing volumes of Telugu poetry, literary appreciations and translations of Telugu poetry into English. With the publication of Chiti-Chanda in 1969, he recognized as a poet. He published This Tense Time in 1982, one of the first comprehensive volumes of modern Telugu poetry in English translation, reviewed by the British poet and literary critic Derek Stanford. He also published his work, Nishadam, in 2010. For his prolific writing, he won various prestigious awards like the Devarakonda Balagangdhara Tilak Award, Free Verse Front Award, Writers Grant from ASRC Nutalapati Award, A.P. State Government Official Languages Award, Telugu University Lifetime Achievement, and many more. He breathed his last on the third of August, 2011.