Manohar Shetty was born in Bombay and educated in Panchgani. He graduated from Bombay University in 1974 and immediately began working as a journalist.
Critical perspectives
Shetty's poetry is seen as being an integral part of the "chronology of modern Indian English poetry," with these third-generation English language poets moving "away from radical modernist techniques. They are more concerned with the portrayal and assessment of their family background, their own lives and relations with others, and their immediate environment. Shetty's poetry is described as reveling in "the celebration of the sombre" and being filled with "sepulchral images" while their "mood is predominantly one of helplessness and lethargy." Shetty is listed in Sudeep Sen's essay "New Indian Poetry: The 1990s Perspective", published in World Literature Today, Vol. 68, No. 2. Sen sees his first three books as having used "with unusual effect the spatial element that pervades everyday life. Whether in a cramped train... or looking inward... or opening a lid". He also sees the poet as being in "full control of the movements of his characters in the areas he has outlined." K. Narayana Chandran of the University of Hyderabad, while reviewing Shetty's Domestic Creatures in World Literature Today, comments: "To be able to write magnificently about the little world one knows - and what passionate care all this involves - is no small gift for a poet. Manohar Shetty is an eminently gifted poet in this sense." In another review in 1982 in the same journal of Shetty's A Guarded Space, S. Amanuddin is more critical, saying some poems had "interesting story lines" but their stories "often tend to be rather pathetic, true to the nature of the Indian social scene." But, commenting on the poet's first book, he said Shetty "does have a number of poems that clearly show he is a talented poet. One would hope to see more volumes of his verse". New Delhi-based magazine Caravan has said that with five collections by the age of 60, Shetty was "something of a rarity among Indian English poets of his and preceding generations, who have tended to be rather less consistent in their output."
Reception
Manohar Shetty's poems do not so much state as imply. The world they connect with is a world of perceptions and sudden realizations. His best poems have a delicacy of touch and texture which would be outstanding in any young poet. This book is full not only of promise but, often, of actual achievement.' – Dom Moraes, on Shetty's first book of poems, A Guarded Space published in 1981. 'Manohar Shetty's poems are pure delight, so much so that, because you want the pleasure to last, you read them slowly, one at a time, taking a mental walk after each. A spare richness marked his poems from the start and, over the decades, this hasn't changed. What has changed is that the poems are even more burnished than before. They glow, and continue to do so long after the page has been turned, the book returned to the shelf... This is poetry so naturally memorable that you don't need to consciously memorize it.' – Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, on his fourth book Personal Effects.
Poetry volumes
As of 2017, he has published eight volumes of poetry. They are:
He has been based in Goa since 1985. Shetty is based in Dona Paula, a suburb some seven kilometres from the state-capital of Panjim in Goa. He is a former editor of the magazine Goa Today and also worked in the media in Mumbai and Bangalore too, including with papers such as Indian Express, Mid-Day. For his stint as editor of Goa Today, he succeeded Vaman Sardessai in the post, after the latter was appointed India's ambassador to Angola. In a book chapter, he has written an account of his personal encounter with alcohol in the book House Spirit: Drinking in India - Stories, Essays, Poems.
