Shrinivási

(Suriname, 1926) has been called the 'poet of the encounter' as he brings together cultures and people in his work. Born Martinus Haridat Lutchman, the teacher at a young age acquainted himself with his Indian roots. He was one of the first poets to write in Sarnami, the mother tongue of the Hindustani in Suriname and the Netherlands. He published some poets in Hindi too, but the larger part of his work is in Dutch. His first poems appeared in 1952 under the pen-name Fernando, but later he adopted the Hindi name for 'citizen of Suriname': Shrinivási. The poet in his work sings the praise of the multicultural population, the climate and nature of his native country. Since his debut Pratiksha (1968) Shrinivási has published various books of poetry and short stories, which stand out for their quality and musical and metaphorical language use. He collaborated in assembling various anthologies of Surinamese literature, including Diversity is power (2007). In 1984 Geert Koefoed collected a major anthology of Shrinavasi's work: Een weinig van het andere (A little of the other). In 2007 he moved back to Curaçao, where he died in 2019.