> I would like to know from anyone knowledgeable a list of the famous
> and/or good poets who came to prominence or who can truly be called
> the poets of this era: the era in question being, say post 1975.
>
The 1995 TANA conference souvenir has a good overview of Telugu
poetry of the last 25 years presented by raamamOhana raai, a noted Telugu
critic. I have posted recently on how to obtain this souvenir almost free.
1970s can be considered the era of virasam. Mid 1980s saw the
beginnings of the feminist poetry and the 1990s seem to be the era of
feminist and daLit poetry in Telugu. For a list of major poets and
works of this era, please see the above artilce.
> Other than the feminist anthology "neeli mEghaalu", I hadn't come across
> a notable collection of the work of poets in the eighties or nineties.
> Sincere ignorance exposed here. Please do not read into this more
> than what the words mean.
Actually, the last five years saw the publication of several
poetic works - more than what I remember in my days of hanging around the
bookshops. There are two major anthologies published recently: 'kavitaa
O kavitaa', edited by paapinEni SivaSankar is representative of the recent
poetry and 'ippuDu chikkanavvutnna paaTa' is a compilation of daLit poetry.
In 1993, TANA published an anthology 'mancutunakalu' edited by
pemmaraaju vENugOpaala raavu that also included several representative
works from modern poets. kalaSapooDi Sreenivaasa raavu gaaru may know if
it is still available.
>
> I think after the days of Yuvabharati, there hasn't been such awareness
> of modern poetry movement nor was there a publishing house that provided
> a means for the upcoming poets to get their works published.
>
As I said above, poetry publication is quite active. tripuranEni
Sreenivaas helped publish several works. ajantaa's svapnalipi is finally
published as a book as are many other works.
> Udayam newspaper did provide for us to read the excellent mini poems
> of aliseTTi prabhaakar (or was it mO ... or aniseTTi ...) daily and
> in the sunday edition had columns for literary discussions and poetry
> corner.
It is aliSeTTi prabhaakar.
Also, chEkoori raamaaraavu's column cEraatalu is published in the
book form too and is informative about the current trends in Telugu poetry.
>
> I would greatly appreciate it if somebody that knows talks about these
> poets of TODAY (and probably a few of YESTERDAY but not of the decades
> ago) and presents us with some of their works. Something like the one
> by Papineni Sivasankar.
>
Many of the poems recently posted by vEloori, ari, and I come
from these and similar anthologies.
> (BTW I would like to know the source of that one, please !)
>
That one was in kavitaa O kavitaa.
> Are there any poets (as opposed to non-poets) at all today ?!
> *sankaram wonders*
No need to wonder.
The answer is: Yes, there are. Many of them. I find their works
to be vibrant, thought provoking and entertaining.
Regards. --- V. Chowdary Jampala