Vallathol Narayana Menon was a Malayalam poet and one of the triumvirate of modern Malayalam poetry, along with Asan and Ulloor. The honorific Mahākavi was applied to him in 1913 after the publication of his Mahakavya Chitrayogam. He was a nationalist poet and wrote a series of poems on various aspects of the Indian freedom movement. He also wrote against the caste system, the tyranny of the British and Brahmanas and other social orthodoxies.He founded the Kerala Kalamandalam and is credited with revitalising the traditional Keralite dance form known as Kathakali.
