Poet Eunice de Souza, who died in her home in the Mumbai suburb of Vakola early on Saturday morning, was, in the words of her contemporary Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, “a volcano” whose works are “lava, molten lines that burn and glow and leave a permanent mark”.

De Souza was involved in over a dozen books. In addition to her works of poetry, she wrote two novellas, children’s stories and edited anthologies of poetry and of women’s writing. Her first book, in 1979, was a collection of poetry called Fix. Her latest collection, Learn from the Almond Leaf, was published in 2016.

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She wrote a regular column for the Mumbai Mirror.

After spending her childhood in Pune, de Souza graduated from the University of Bombay and went on to Marquette University in the US for post-gradute degree. As a teacher in the English department of Mumbai’s St Xavier’s College for more than three decades, she inspired several generations of students.

This video features her at the Goa Literary Festival in 2012 talking about These My Words, an anthology of Indian poetry that she coedited with her long-time collaborator Melanie Silgardo.