Mogeri Gopalakrishna Adiga (1918–1992) was a modern Kannada poet. He is known by some commentators as the "pioneer of New style" poetry.^[1]

As editor of Saakshi magazine he helped bring Kannada literature to the masses.^[2]

Adiga's grandson is Manu Raju, Senior Political reporter for CNN.^[3]

In the 1950s and 1960s Adiga was a teacher in Mysore.^[4] From 1964 until 1968 he was the principal of Lal Bahadur College in Sagara, and from 1968 until 1971 he was Principal of Poorna Prajna College in Udupi.^[5] He later worked as the Deputy Director for the National Book Trust of India.

Although Adiga taught English literature, he wrote almost exclusively in Kannada, except for a single poem in English on Rabindranath Tagore in 1961. It seems that he wrote this at the request of M.N.Roy for the Radical Humanist magazine.

His style has been described as a response to the independence of India from British rule in 1947. The style called Navya was generally about the new times. Inspired by modern Western literature and Indian tradition, he set out to portray the "disillusionment and angst of the times".^[5]

In 2007, Nadig brought out Selected Poems, Gopalakrishna Adiga, a work commissioned by Bharatiya Sahitya Parishat (the Indian Academy of Literature).

His poetic style is revealed in his 1957 poem "Prarthane" (Prayer).

Prayer

Lord, plying the well-known pumps of heraldic praise your hirelings bend double; others, gouty wagtails, lick the land for crumbs; one snuffs his candle out and seeks like a eunuch leech the warm marshes in the cracks of light; another sissy gives his back to the time-fed rumps and sheathes his dagger deep. Lord, I am not of these.

Is life leaving everything we have and craving for things which we do not have?