Gopi Kottoor

Gopikrishnan Kottoor is the pen name of Raghav G. Nair (born 1956, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala), an award-winning Indian English poet. He is best known for his internationally acclaimed poem Father, Wake Us In Passing. He is also the founder editor of the quarterly poetry journal Poetry Chain. Kottoor presently lives in Trivandrum, Kerala India, where he works as a senior banker with Reserve Bank of India.

Kottoor had his school education in the Loyola English School,and Arya Central School, Trivandrum. He took his B.A. in English Literature, and Masters in English from the Institute of English, Trivandrum, where with Dr. Ayyappa Paniker the noted professor of English, they formed a college poetry club that invited Indian poets in English such as Kamala Das, R Parthasarathy, and Keki Daruwalla to read at the college. Meanwhile, Kottoor won his first poetry prize, a first, in the University college poetry competitions, and published his poems in 'Thought' (Ed Keshav Malik), ' The Illustrated Weekly of India' and in the Bennet and Coleman magazine ' Youth Times' that featured poetry in their middle page, selected by poets as Shiv K. Kumar and Kamala Das. He soon published his poetry in Opinion, Kavya Bharati, Lipi and Chandrabhaga (Ed : Jayanta Mahapatra), Indian Literature, Debonair, Kavi India, The Literary Half Yearly, Femina, Triveni, The Hindu Literary Supplement, and most other Indian magazines publishing poetry in English. Instrumental in his grooming up as a poet was the Tamil novelist and poet T.K. Doraiswamy,better known by his pen name ' Nakulan' who read his poetry note books every Sunday and introduced him to the world of English, European, and American poetry.

Kottoor attended the Master of Fine Arts (Poetry) program of the Texas State University, Southwest Texas, USA, having won the Philip McCormick scholarship of the University,during the year 2000.

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