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Nissim Ezekiel
indian poet
1924 – 2004aged 79
A foundational figure in Indian poetry written in English, whose spare, unsentimental verse on ordinary domestic and civic life helped move the tradition beyond its earlier spiritual and orientalist preoccupations. He won the Sahitya Akademi Award, India's national letters prize, in 1983 for his collection Latter-Day Psalms, and his restrained, precisely crafted style shaped the generation of Indian English poets who followed him.