Eminent Bengali poet Joy Goswami will be honoured with the 31st Moortidevi Award for the year 2017.
Goswami will be conferred with the award for his poetry collection titled Du Dondo Phowara Matro which is an autobiographical account of the poets’ life featuring his close ones including a pet cat.
He will be the first Bengali poet to get this award.
Secret trysts, chance loves and more of the fantastical quotidian which makes up the poets’ consciousness are some highlights of poet's literary work.
He has Kendriya and Bangla Sahitya Akademi Awards, Ananda Purashkar, and the first Tata Literature Live Poet Laureate Award.
Moortidevi Award
The Moortidevi Award is an India literary award annually presented by the Bharatiya Jnanpith, a literary and research organisation, to an author for their "contemplative and perceptive work".
The award is bestowed only to Indian writers writing in Indian languages
The award consists of a Saraswati Statue, a Citation Plaque and cash award of Rupees 4 lac.
Kannada writer C. K. Nagaraja Rao was the first person to be honoured with the award in 1983 for his novel, Pattamahadevi Shantala Devi.