Navtej Bharati

Navtej Bharati (Navtej Singh) is a Punjabi poet and essayist. He was born on 5 February 1938 in Rode village near Moga in Punjab. Rekhta's profile says he took degrees in literature and philosophy at Punjab University and the University of Victoria, and worked in the language department of Punjab University, translating and editing Indian classics, before migrating to Canada in 1968. He lives in London, Ontario, where he ran the publisher Third Eye Publications and in the 1980s edited the literary quarterly Eclipse.

Key works

• Simbal De Phul (1968), his first book of poems.
• Leela (1999; second edition 2019), written with his younger brother, the poet Ajmer Rode. It runs to more than a thousand pages and is described by Rekhta as one of the most important Punjabi poetic works of the twentieth century.
• Endless Eye (2002), poems in English, and Puth-Sidh (2019), a book of fifty essays.

He has received the Punjab government's Best Poet of the State award three times and, shared with Ajmer Rode, the Anad Kav Sanman of the Anad Foundation for 2009 to 2010. Writing in The News on Sunday in 2016, Zubair Ahmad said his later work had moved from philosophical themes towards a celebration of the most ordinary.

Known for: Leela, and for a body of Punjabi poetry written in Canada.