Tagore Award Ceremony
November 2011
The Tagore Society of Houston and the Department of English and its Creative Writing Program held an awards ceremony to honor Zachary Martin, winner of the 2011 – 2012 Tagore Passport Operating Scholarship. The award is meant to support the legacy of Rabindranath Tagore, the 1913 Nobel Laureate in Literature, an artist, writer, educator, and political reformer whose work promoted global understanding. The annual competitive scholarship is open to all full-time UH graduate students whose work contributes to the understanding of Tagore’s legacy. Wyman Herendeen, Department Chair, and Raja Banga, President of the Tagore Society of Houston, presented Zach Martin with a certificate of award. Zach, a doctoral student in the Creative Writing Program, plans to travel in India to study the works and influence of Rabindranath Tagore. In addition to the award ceremony, the Tagore Society presented copies of fourteen volumes of the collected works of Tagore, to be housed in the English Department’s library and used by interested faculty and students. The ceremony included a reading of Tagore’s poetry by Chitra Divakaruni, who discussed Tagore’s writing and music, and the performance of a selection of Tagore’s music, including vocal and instrumental pieces performed by outstanding musicians of the Tagore Society.