1st Jayanta Mahapatra Memorial Lecture
22 October 2024
Gita Govinda Sadan, backside of Jayadev Bhawan, Bhubaneswar
Mamang Dai
SPEAKER
She is an Indian poet, novelist and journalist based in Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh. She received Padma Shri in 2011 from the Government of India. The government of Arunachal Pradesh conferred on her annual Verrier Elwin Prize in 2013 for her book Arunachal Pradesh: The Hidden Land. She received Sahitya Akademi Award in 2017 for her novel The Black Hill.
Jayanta Mahapatra was born on October 22, 1928 in Cuttack. He was enrolled at Stewart School. He studied Physics at Patna University. He taught physics at several government colleges till his retirement in 1986.
Jayanta Mahapatra started writing poems in English in early 1960s. He tried his poems with journals abroad. Some of those major journals like Poetry, The Sewanee Review, The Hudson Review, The Times Literary Supplement and The New Yorker published his poems. His first two books of poems, Close the Sky Ten by Ten and Svayamvara and Other Poems came out in 1971. His first major publication was A Rain of Rites. He received first Sahitya Akademi Award in English in 1981 for his long poem, Relationship. His other awards include Jacob Glatstein Memorial Award, Kanhaiyalal Lifetime Poetry Award, Allen Tate Poetry Prize and Padma Shri. He wrote 20 books of poems in English, twelve books of poems in Odia and ten books of translation. His autobiography, Bhor Motira Kanaphula, was in Odia. He passed away in 2023.
