Bishnu Dey was a prominent Bengali poet, prose writer, translator, academic and art critic in the era of modernism, post-modernism. Starting off as a symbologist, he won recognition for the musical quality of his poems, and forms the post-Tagore generation of Bengali poets, like Buddhadeb Basu and Samar Sen, which marked the advent of "New Poetry" in Bengali literature, deeply influenced by Marxist ideology. He even published a poetry magazine for while wherein he encouraged socially conscious writing. His own work reveals a poet's solitary struggle, quest for human dignity, amidst a crisis of uprooted identity. Through his literary career, he taught English literature at various Calcutta colleges, Ripon College, Presidency College (1944–1947), Maulana Azad College (1947–1969) and Krishnanagar College.