Seth was born on the 20th of June 1952 in Calcutta, India. His father, Premo Seth, was an executive in the footwear industry and his mother, Leila Seth, was the first woman to become Chief Justice of a High Court in India. Seth was first educated at The Doon School, a private boarding school in Dehradun, where he was editor-in-chief of The Doon School Weekly. Seth also attended Tonbridge School in England to complete his A-levels, where he formed an interest in poetry and learned Chinese. Later he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. In 1975, he went on to pursued a PhD in Economics at Stanford University in California though never completed it. Now, the poet divides his time between England, where he refurbished the former home of the poet George Herbert in Salisbury, and India, where he has a family home in Noida.

The poet’s published works, such as his first poetry collection Mappings (1981) and others like Beastly Tales from Here and There (1992), are celebrated and significant contributions to the Indian English-language poetry canon. Seth’s writing has received several awards, notably: Padma Shri, Sahitya Academy Award, Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, Commonwealth Poetry Prize, WH Smith Literary Award, and Crossword Book Award. Themes of tension, frustration, relationships, nostalgia, and rootlessness reverberate through his poetry highlight his intimate familiarity and relationship with the literature of both Eastern and Western countries and cultures, which is woven into the core of his writing. Seth’s poems are intrinsically cosmopolitan: “they regain diverse states and cultures of being”. 

Poetic craft is central to Seth’s writing. During his time at Stanford University, Seth met the poet Timothy Steele, who greatly influenced his poetic style. The Golden Gate (1986), Seth’s first novel, was dedicated to Steele in acknowledgement. Seth under Steele’s guidance reconsidered the significance of traditional forms of rhyme and metre in exploring contemporary themes can be approached through traditional earging him to move on from free-verse poetry. Seth unearthed “the way poetic form and poetic inspiration work to search each other out”. He has been frequently referred to as a neo-formalist and praised as a writer of polished poetry. In a time when free verse is the dominant style, the poet does not shy away from making use of rhyme and metre, as well as established types of verse such as the sonnet. For example, in his poems Can’t (2015) and Diwali (1981), Seth makes use of regular rhyming schemes and follows stylistic conventions, but in subject deals with modern dilemmas of the Self. His combination of traditional form and contemporary themes results in an uncanny but striking body of work.