Homing and 1 other poem
Memorys prayer flags knot foreign soil, where intersectionality and trauma nourish fierce…
Read more →In Memoriam – Jayanta Mahapatra, by Sukrita Paul Kumar
Rooted in Odia soil yet boundless in reach — Sukrita Paul Kumar reflects on a poet who saw time as a circle, and made two languages richer for it.
“Our ancestors are a living presence with us” said Jayanta Mahapatra to me in a conversation a few years ago.
True, indeed he himself would be a living presence forever for us, the poets of the subcontinent, through his poems and his warm spirit. The mystery he had said lay in how we in India understand our lives woven in a cyclic fashion; there is no saying when the straight line becomes a circle and then again, the circle turns into a straight line. He related his understanding of “time” to physics, the discipline he was trained in.
Rooted in Odia culture, history and landscape, he spoke of how his poem “Dhauli” came out of his intense pain over the gruesome massacre of the people of Odisha (Kalinga kingdom), and how the river lay discoloured with their blood. The past of his land lived on vibrantly in his memory.
By writing poetry in both English as well as Odia language, he enriched both the languages and cherished the freedom to choose the language to suit the content he wished to write on. One of the few poets to have been published abroad in prestigious magazines since long, Jayanta Mahapatra contributed greatly in internationalizing Indian poetry in English. In editing and publishing “Chandrabhaga”, he mentored many a generation of young poets.
We pay our humble homage to him by taking inspiration from him and honing our sensitivities and creative skills in writing poetry.
Sukrita Paul Kumar
Sukrita Paul Kumar A well-known poet and critic, Sukrita Paul Kumar (born in Kenya) was an invited poet and Fellow at the prestigious International Writing Programme, Iowa, USA. Former Fellow of IIAS (Shimla), and honorary faculty at Durrell Centre at Corfu, Greece, she has published several collections of poetry, translations, critical works and has held exhibitions of her paintings. She held the Aruna Asaf Ali Chair at the University of Delhi.