Varavara Rao - Poetry and Literature

Poetry and Literature

Varavara Rao has published nine poetry collections of his own besides editing a number of poetry anthologies. His poetry collections are: Chali Negallu (Camp Fires, 1968), Jeevanaadi (Pulse, 1970), Ooregimpu (Procession, 1973), Swechcha (Freedom, 1978), Samudram (Ocean, 1983), Bhavishyathu Chitrapatam (Portrait of the Future, 1986), Muktakantam (Free Throat, 1990), Aa Rojulu (Those Days, 1998), and Unnadedo Unnattu (As it is, 2000). His poetry has been translated into almost all Indian languages. His poetry collections appeared in Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi and a few Bengali and Hindi literary journals brought out special numbers of his poetry and writings. Besides a number of articles on particular occasions, his thesis on ‘Telangana Liberation Struggle and Telugu Novel – A Study into Interconnection between Society and Literature’ (1983) is considered to be landmark in Marxist literary criticism in Telugu. He published three volumes of literary criticism and a volume of his editorials in Srjana. During his prison days he translated Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o’s prison diary Detained and novel Devil on the Cross into Telugu, besides writing his own prison diary Sahacharulu (1990).