Noted poet Addepalli Ramamohana Rao passed away while undergoing treatment in a private hospital here on Wednesday. He was 81. He is survived by wife and four sons.

Ramamohana Rao, who celebrated his 80th birthday on a grand scale on September 6, 2015, fell ill a couple of weeks later and was admitted to the hospital. He was diagnosed of cancer. He was on dialysis for the last 10 days. He breathed his last at 11.30 a.m. The last rites will be performed here on Thursday.

Born and brought up at Machilipatnam, Ramamohana Rao made Kakinada his home in 1970. After finishing his Masters in Telugu from Sri Venkteswara University, he took up teaching profession. He retired from MSN Charities Degree College here as lecturer in Telugu and subsequently did Ph.D. on modern trends in Telugu poetry.

The 70th birth anniversary celebrations of ‘Mahakavi’ Sri Sri in Kakinada in 1980 brought instant fame to Ramamohana Rao in the literary circles when he released a book consisting of in-depth criticism of ‘Maha Prasthanam,’ considered to be one of the great works in modern Telugu poetry.

In 1990s, he was the first poet to oppose globalisation, which won him the title of ‘Praja Kavi’ from fellow poets and readers.

In an interview given to The Hindu before his 80th birthday, Ramamohana Rao said that his teachers and lecturers had encouraged him to pursue literature. “Tagore, Sri Sri, Krishna Sastry, Tilak, and T.S. Eliot are my favourite poets. The thoughts of Karl Marx, Swami Vivekananda, and Mahatma Gandhi had inspired me a lot,” he had said.