Bio
Mudnakudu Chinnaswamy (1954), a well known Kannada Poet hails from Mudnakudu village in Chamarajanagar District of Karnataka. He has two post graduate degrees viz., M.Com. M.A., with a D.Lit. in Social Sciences. He was a Finance Executive by profession and recently retired as Director (Finance) from Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation. Poetry is his passion but worked in other genres of literature as well, besides having a wide range of interests in culture, theatre, cinema and social work. He has brought out 26 books so far which include 6 collections of poetry, 4 of essays, 3 plays and a collection of short stories.
A prominent dalit voice, he has established a niche for himself through his empirical imaging in mellowed tone. His works have been translated into other Indian vernaculars and widely published. Translations of the selected poems in English have been published in the literary journals like Indian Literature, The New Quest, and Little Magazine (India). Translations have also been published in literary Magazines abroad (in Spanish Arquitrave (Columbia) and Hebrew in Helicon (Israel) in German Driesch Verlag (Austria) and so on. He has attended many International Poetry Conferences and extensively traveled.
His poetry in Spanish translated by Rowena Hill ‘Poemas: Mudnakudu Chinnaswamy’ has been published by the Cultural Department of Venezuelan Govt. (CONAC) in 2004 under ‘World Poetry Series’. He stands to be the first poet from kannada lore to get published with an anthology in Spanish. He has directed two plays for theater groups one being ‘Bahurupi’ for the National Repertoire, Rangayana in Mysore.
He has been associated in production of 2 feature films one of which won gold medal from GOK. Besides he himself acted in a documentary ‘mayaa loka’ He has been felicitated in and outside the country and credited with many awards including Karnataka Sahitya Academy Award in 2009 for life time achievement.