Siddhicharan Shrestha, one of Nepal’s preeminent poet’s 107th birth anniversary was marked amid a function held at the Office of the Vice President in Kathmandu on Wednesday. Cultural expert and poet, Tulasi Diwas and journalist, Ganesh Kumar Rai, were awarded with the Yugkavi Siddhicharan Puraskar-2075 and Yugkavi Siddhicharan Yuva Rastriya Patrakarita Puraskar-2075, respectively. The event was organised by  the Yugkavi Siddhicharan Pratisthan.

The felicitation programme is part of a three-day long event set up as tribute to the venerated poet. The event was inaugurated with a commemoration ceremony held at Siddhicharan Chowk in Dharmapath,  on Tuesday.  Today, a poetry seminar featuring poets writing in various languages will be held at the Library hall of Nepal Academy, according to Fanindra Raj Niraula, co-secretary of the Academy.

Shrestha’s most famous poem, Mero Pyaro Okhaldhunga, is noted for his simple naturalistic verses and for his contributions through his poetry and journalism to the struggle against an autocratic Rana regime (1846-1951), for which he was sentenced to 18 years in jail. According to scholar and literary critic Abhi Subedi, “Poetics of spatiality is one of Siddhicharan Shrestha’s major accomplishments. Unlike his contemporaries, who either resorted to flights of imagination or architected philosophical and intellectual literary formations, Siddhicharan created powerful poetry of simplicity through a projection of space and ‘everyday’ savvy consciousness… Evocation of that presentism in subtle style is the poet’s very original strength seen in Nepali poetry of his times.”