THE HIMALAYAS - SUJATA BHATT

 

Life and career

Bhatt was born in Ahmedabad, and brought up in Pune until 1968, when she emigrated to the United States with her family. She has an MFA from the University of Iowa, and for a time was writer-in-residence at the University of Victoria, Canada. She received the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asia) and the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award for her first collection Brunizem. ^[1] She received a Cholmondeley Award in 1991 and the Italian Tratti Poetry Prize in 2000. ^[1] Her translations from the German include Mickle Makes Muckle: poems, mini plays and short prose by Michael Augustin (Dedalus Press, 2007). Bhatt was a visiting fellow at Dickinson College, Pennsylvania and currently works as a freelance writer. She has translated Gujarati poetry into English for the Penguin Anthology of Contemporary Indian Women Poets. Combining both Gujarati and English, Bhatt writes "Indian-English rather than Anglo-Indian poetry."^[2] Her poems have appeared in various journals in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, and Canada, and have been widely anthologised, as well as being broadcast on British, German, and Dutch radio.

Many of Bhatt's poems have themes of love and violence. She explores issues such as racism and the interaction between Asian, European, and North American culture. Michael Schmidt observed that her "free verse is fast-moving, urgent with narratives, softly spoken. Her cadence is natural, her diction undecorated."^[3] Bhatt has been recognized as a distinctive voice in contemporary poetry. She is, the New Statesman declared, "one of the finest poets alive".^[4]

Bhatt now lives in Bremen, Germany with her husband, German writer Michael Augustin, and daughter.^[1]

Poetry collections

• 1988 Bruzinem Carcanet Press
• 1991 Monkey Shadows Carcanet Press
• 1995 The Stinking Rose Carcanet Press
• 1997 Point No Point. Carcanet Press
• 2000: Augatora. Carcanet Press
• 2002: The Colour of Solitude (Second edition). Carcanet Press
• 2008: Pure Lizard. Carcanet Press

Awards

• 1988 Commonwealth poetry prize (Asia) Brunizem
• 1988 Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize Brunizem
• 1991 Poetry Book Society Recommendation Monkey Shadows
• 1991 Cholmondeley Award
• 2000 Poetry Book Society Recommendation Aguatora
• 2000 Tratti Poetry Prize

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle

Born 22 May 1859 Edinburgh , Scotland, United Kingdom Died 7 July 1930 (aged 71) Crowborough , East Sussex, England, United Kingdom Occupation Novelist, short story writer, poet, doctor of medicine Nationality Scottish Citizenship British Genres Detective fiction, science fiction, historical novels, non-fiction Notable work(s) Stories of Sherlock Holmes The Lost World

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930^[1]) was a Scottish^[2] physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered a major innovation in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger. He was a prolific writer whose other works include science fiction stories, historical novels, plays and romances, poetry, and non-fiction.

Early life

Arthur Conan Doyle was born the third of ten siblings on 22 May 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland.^[3] His father, Charles Altamont Doyle, who was born in England of Irish descent, and his mother, born Mary Foley, who was Irish, had married in 1855. Doyle's father died in 1893, in the Crichton Royal, Dumfries, after many years of psychiatric illness.^[4]
Although he is now referred to as "Conan Doyle", the origin of this compound surname (if that is how he meant it to be understood) is uncertain. The entry in which his baptism is recorded in the register of St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh gives "Arthur Ignatius Conan" as his Christian name, and simply "Doyle" as his surname. It also names Michael Conan as his godfather.^[5]
Conan Doyle was sent to the Roman Catholic Jesuit preparatory school Hodder Place, Stonyhurst, at the age of nine. He then went on to Stonyhurst College until 1875.
From 1876 to 1881 he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, including a period working in the town of Aston (now a district of Birmingham) and in Sheffield.^[6] While studying, Conan Doyle also began writing short stories; his first published story appeared in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal before he was 20.^[7] Following his term at university, he was employed as a ship's surgeon on the SS Mayumba during a voyage to the West African coast. He completed his doctorate on the subject of tabes dorsalis in 1885.^[8]

[edit] Origins of Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes (right) and Dr Watson, by Sidney Paget.

Doyle's study at Groombridge Place

In 1882 he joined former classmate George Budd as his partner at a medical practice in Plymouth,^[9] but their relationship proved difficult, and Conan Doyle soon left to set up an independent practice.^[10] Arriving in Portsmouth in June of that year with less than £10 to his name, he set up a medical practice at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea.^[11] The practice was initially not very successful; while waiting for patients, Conan Doyle again began writing stories and composed his first novel—The Narrative of John Smith—which would go unpublished until 2011.^[12] His first significant work, A Study in Scarlet, appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887. It featured the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes, who was partially modelled after his former university teacher Joseph Bell. Conan Doyle wrote to him, "It is most certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes. ... [R]ound the centre of deduction and inference and observation which I have heard you inculcate I have tried to build up a man."^[13] Future short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes were published in the English Strand Magazine. Robert Louis Stevenson was able, even in faraway Samoa, to recognise the strong similarity between Joseph Bell and Sherlock Holmes: "[M]y compliments on your very ingenious and very interesting adventures of Sherlock Holmes. ... [C]an this be my old friend Joe Bell?"^[14] Other authors sometimes suggest additional influences—for instance, the famous Edgar Allan Poe character C. Auguste Dupin.^[15]

Portrait of Doyle by ges and family

Conan Doyle's family in New York 1922

Death" of Sherlock Holmes 
In 1890 Conan Doyle studied ophthalmology in Vienna, and moved to London in 1891 to set up a practice as an ophthalmologist. He wrote in his autobiography that not a single patient crossed his door. This gave him more time for writing, and in November 1891 he wrote to his mother: "I think of slaying Holmes ... and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things." His mother responded, "You may do what you deem fit, but the crowds will not take this lightheartedly."

Holmes and Moriarty fighting over the Reichenbach Falls. Art by Sidney Paget.

In December 1893, in order to dedicate more of his time to more "important" works—his historical novels— Conan Doyle had Holmes and Professor Moriarty apparently plunge to their deaths together down the Reichenbach Falls in the story "The Final Problem". Public outcry, however, led him to bring the character back in 1901, in The Hound of the Baskervilles. In "The Adventure of the Empty House", it was explained that only Moriarty had fallen; but since Holmes had other dangerous enemies—especially Colonel Sebastian Moran—he had arranged to also be temporarily "dead". Holmes ultimately was featured in a total of 56 short stories and four Conan Doyle novels, and has since appeared in many novels and stories by other authors.