Atmaram Raoji Deshpande (1901–1982) was a Marathi

Marathi language

Marathi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people of western and central India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are over 68 million fluent speakers worldwide. Marathi has the fourth largest number of native speakers in India and is the fifteenth most...

 poet from Vidarbha

Vidarbha

Vidarbha is the eastern region of Maharashtra state made up of Nagpur Division and Amravati Division. Its former name is Berar . It occupies 31.6% of total area and holds 21.3% of total population of Maharashtra...

 region of Maharashtra

Maharashtra

Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

. He wrote poems under the pen name Anil (अनिल). He was born on 11 September 1901 at Murtijapur in Akola district of Central India. He was married to Kusum Jayawant in 1929 who took the name Kusumavati Deshpande

Kusumavati Deshpande

Kusumavati Deshpande was a Marathi writer from Maharashtra, India.She was born on November 10, 1904 in Amravati, Maharashtra, her maiden having been Kusum Jaywant...

, was also a Marathi writer.

Deshpande introduced free style --Muktachhand (मुक्तछंद)-- poetry to Marathi literature. He also introduced in Marathi Dashapadi (दशपदी), a new genre of sonnets comprising ten lines. His collection of poems with the same name Dashapadi (दशपदी) received a Sahitya Akademi Award

Sahitya Akademi Award

Sahitya Akademi Award is a literary honor in India which Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers of outstanding works in one of the following twenty-four major Indian languagesAssamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri,...

 in 1977. He was elected for Sahitya Akademi Fellowship

Sahitya Akademi Fellowship

The Sahitya Akademi Fellowship is a literary honour in India. Awarded by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, to the "immortals of literature," and limited to twenty one individuals at any given time, it is the highest literary honour conferred by the Government of India...

 in 1979.

He presided over Marathi Sahitya Sammelan

Marathi Sahitya Sammelan

Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan is a conference for literary discussions by Marathi writers. Though the conference has sometimes been held in a town outside the Indian state of Maharashtra, it is typically held annually in one of the towns in Maharashtra where Marathi is the mother tongue...

 (मराठी साहित्य सम्मेलन) at Malvan

Malvan

Malvan is a town in Sindhudurg District, the southernmost district of Maharashtra. This culturally and historically important town is a Taluka place in Sindhudurg District...

in 1958.

A more detailed biographical sketch of Deshpande is available in reference .

Works

The following are the titles of collections of Deshpande's poems:

• Phulwat (फुलवात) (1932)
• Bhagnamoorti (भग्नमूर्ति) (1940)
• Nirwasit Chini Mulas (निर्वासित चिनी मुलास) (1943)
• Perte Wha (पेर्ते व्हा)(1947)
• Sangati (सांगाती) (1961)
• “Dashapadi (दशपदी) (1976)