Sahitya Akademi Award for Dogri poet Vijay Verma

Jammu, December 20

Renowned poet from Jammu, Vijay Verma, won the coveted Sahitya Akademi Award 2023 for his Dogri language ghazal book, ‘Daun Sadiyan Ek Seer’. The awards were announced on Wednesday. The book by Verma comprises 721 couplets making it the longest ever ‘ghazal’ till date in Dogri language.

Verma is a poet and a retired senior news reader of Dogri, who was born in Seri Panditan of Jammu in 1962. He is also former in-charge of Dogri news unit of News Services Division of All India Radio. Verma started writing poetry during school days and writes in Dogri, English and Hindi.

Verma successfully represented Dogri language in Commonwealth Young Writer’s Conference, New Delhi, in 2010. He also represented the language in 2022 via video conferencing as a poet from Jammu at International BIMSTEC Literature Festival of Sahitya Akademi and Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature.

Verma has six books to his credit in Dogri, including two poetry books.