Jayanta Mahapatra
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Jayanta Mahapatra is one of the best known Indian English poets. He also writes in Oriya. Mahapatra was born in 1928 in Cuttack, the city where he spent most of his lifetime.
All his working life, he taught physics at Ravenshaw College, Cuttack. He retired in 1986.[1]
Mahapatra has authored 16 books of poems. His poetry volumes include Relationship, Bare Face and Shadow Space. Mahapatra is a Sahitya Akademi awardee, and also a recipient of the Jacob Glatstein award conferred by Poetry magazine, Chicago. Besides poetry, he has experimented widely with myriad forms of prose. His lone published book of prose remains Green Gardener, an anthology of short stories. Mahapatra is also a distinguished editor and brought out, for many years, a literary magazine, Chandrabhaga (http://www.chandrabhaga.cjb.net), from Cuttack. The magazine, named after a prominent river in Orissa, ceased publication with the last issue released in December 2006.
By all standards, Mahapatra's tryst with the muse came rather late in life. He took to writing poetry when he was into his 40s. The publication of his first book of poems, Svayamvara and Other Poems, in 1971 was followed by the publication of Close The Sky Ten By Ten. One of Mahapatra's better remembered works is the long poem Relationship, for which he won the Sahitya Akademi award in 1981. He is the first Indian English Poet to bag the honour.
Besides being one of the most popular Indian poets of his generation, Mahapatra was also part of the trio of poets who laid the foundations of Indian English Poetry. He shared a special bond with A. K. Ramanujan, one the finest poets in the IEP tradition. Mahapatra is also different in not being a product of the Bombay school of poets. Over time, he has managed to carve a quiet, tranquail poetic voice of his own--distinctly different from those of his contemporaries. His wordy lyricism combined with authentic Indian themes put him in a league of his own.
In a way, Jayanta Mahapatra is not just an Indian English Poet. He is a school of poetry that has inspired many younger generation poets.
Contents |
[edit] Books by Jayanta Mahapatra
- Poetry
- 1971: Svayamvara and Other Poems[2]
- 1971: Close the Sky Ten by Ten[2]
- 1976: A Father's Hours[2]
- 1976: A Rain of Rites[2]
- 1979: Waiting[2]
- 1980: The False Start,[2] Bombay: Clearing House
- 1980: Relationship[2]
- 1983: Life Signs[2]
- 1986: Dispossessed Nests[2]
- 1987: Selected Poems[2]
- 1988: Burden of Waves & Fruit[2]
- 1989: Temple[2]
- Bare Face[2]
- Shadow Space[2]
- A Rain of Rites[1]
- Waiting[1]
- 2005: Random Descent, Third Eye Communications[3]
- Prose
- The Green Gardener, short stories
Mahapatra's poems have been anthologized in the celebrated volumes of Indian poetry edited by R. Parthasarthy and Arvind Krishna Mehrotra.
[edit] Critical studies
- 2001: Bijay Kumar Das, The Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: third revised and enlarged edition; New Delhi, Atlantic, ISBN 8171569684[4]
- 2006: Jaydeep Sarangi and Gauri Shankar Jha, editors, The Indian Imagination of Jayanta Mahapatra, New Delhi, Sarup and Sons, 2006, ISBN 8176256226, a compilation of critical articles[5]
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b c [1]Web page titled "Jayanta Mahapatra's Profile" at the Muse India Web site, accessed October 16, 2007
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n [2]Jayata Mahapatra Web page at the Orissa Gateway Web site, accessed October 16, 2007
- ^ [3]Ramnarayan, Gowri, "In Conversation: Brutal landscape" in the Sunday "Literary review" section of The Hindu, dated October 2, 2005, accessed October 16, 2007
- ^ [4]Vedam's Books from India Web site, accessed October 16, 2007
- ^ [5]Vedam's Books from India Web site, accessed October 16, 2007
[edit] External links
- Literary review, The Hindu, October 2, 2005
- A Profile of Jayanta Mahapatra
- JM's poem Freedom from The Little Magazine
- An Article by JM
- Interview at Muse India
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