Punjabi poet Prabhjot Kaur passes away

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 24

Punjabi poet Prabhjot Kaur passed away in Delhi today. She was 92. Besides short stories, she was known for her love poems. Punjabi writer Gulzar Singh Sandhu, confirming news of her death, said: “Her poetry was non-traditional, very fine. Rarely has any Punjabi writer received so many awards as she did.”

She was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for her poetry book “Pabbi” in 1964. She and her husband Col Narenderpal Singh, a well-known novelist who won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1976, were the only couple to have won the country's top literary honour.   In 1966, Prabhjot Kaur was nominated to the Punjab Vidhan Parishad. She was awarded the Padma Shri the following year.

Influenced by the freedom struggle, she penned patriotic poems and her first anthology of poems was published in 1943. Her poetry was translated into several foreign  languages, including French, Persian, Greek, Arabic, Russian and Hungarian. Her anthology of poems titled “Plateau” was published in Paris too. She has 24 anthologies of poems and four collections of short stories to her credit.