Eminent Malayalam poet O. N.V. Kurup has been chosen for the Jnanpith Award for the year 2007 and noted Urdu poet Akhlaq Khan Shahryar for 2008 for their contribution to literature.The recipients for the country's highest literary honour were announced today after a meeting of Jnanpith Selection Board.Born in 1931 in Kerala's Kollam district, Kurup is a leading voice among the contemporary Malayalam poets who has reinvented the narrative transition of Malayalam poetry through his long poems like 'Ujjayini' and 'Swayamvaram'. Born in 1936 in a Muslim Rajput family in Uttar Pradesh's Bareilly district, Shahryar shaped himself as an intellectual poet, whose poetry strongly expresses an “ideological non-commitment”.