Attoor was a unique poetic voice of his era

Attoor Ravi Varma was a unique poetic voice who was incomparable in his era. He used the minimum of Sanskrit words in his poems and was more influenced by the Tamil tradition. He was deep-rooted in South Indian culture and well- versed in classical music, especially Carnatic, percussion like chenda and  Kathakali music.

Though he was over two decades older than me, our poetry appeared at the same time in M. Govindan’s Sameeksha and the little magazines of the time. In fact, both of us were influenced by M. Govindan.

I treated Attoor as one among us, the younger ones, as we shared a common poetic sensibility.

He was the seniormost poet among our group and was even senior to Ayyappa Panicker who died in 2006.

Attoor symbolised all the good in Indian tradition and shunted all that was bad. His poems had the rhythm of this tradition.

 He developed his own indigenous form of modernity which was different from western modernity, though he was well- versed in it. In spite of the fact that he was steeped in tradition, he was aware of modern-day realities. This was evident in the poems he wrote in the 1970s and 80s like Sankramanam, Udatham, Piravi and Ottovin pattu.

He also translated many works from Tamil to Malayalam, including the novel Oru Pullimarathin Kadha. He introduced modern Tamil poetry to the Malayali audience. His translation of Tamil poetry into Malayalam has been published in a single large volume.

Attoor encouraged the younger generation of the poets and edited an anthology of such poets like P.P. Ramachandran, Anvar Ali and Anitha Thampi.

(As told to Sabloo Thomas)