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Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Jayanta Mahapatra’s “Perhaps I am not a poet at all, Sreekala” was a moment of self-doubt in conversation, not a rejection of his work or his place in Indian poetry. In a 2022 interview published by Scroll.in in 2024, the poet linked that uncertainty to a larger conviction: poetry mattered, but life mattered more—and poems had to be made through effort.
What Mahapatra meant by “Perhaps I am not a poet at all”
The line comes at the close of Mahapatra’s exchange with poet and scholar Sreekala Sivasankaran. He had said that readers might not understand him, then asked, “Perhaps I am not a poet at all, Sreekala.” Read in that setting, it expresses uncertainty about how his work reached readers. It is not evidence that he disowned his poems or denied being a poet.
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Re-reading Jayanta Mahapatra: Selected Poems | $18.00 | Buy on Amazon |
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The doubt sits alongside another distinction he made about poetry and life. “Being in love mattered much more than writing poetry,” he told Sivasankaran. He also said, “I needed love, love has sustained me.” These are not claims that he wrote love poetry above all else; he explicitly said, “No, I am NOT a love poet.” Rather, he described love as a force in his life, while resisting a label that would reduce his writing to one subject.
A life rooted in Odisha
Mahapatra was born in Cuttack and described having lived there all his life. Sivasankaran’s profile places his home in Tinkonia Bagicha, surrounded by bamboo, and presents Odisha and its places as central to his poetry. Cuttack, Puri and the wider landscape of Odisha offer useful bearings for readers approaching his work, though they are not a complete key to interpreting it.
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Before he became known as a poet, Mahapatra studied Physics for a master’s degree at Patna University and returned to teach at Ravenshaw College. He recalled beginning to write poetry at 38—relatively late for a literary career. In his account, the discipline of Physics helped him approach the work of writing.
Poetry as labor, not a finished gift
Mahapatra rejected the idea that a poem simply arrives complete. “Poetry doesn’t come on its own,” he said. He described starting with a thought and building a poem from it through difficult work, revision and rewriting.
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His routine made that process concrete: he might write in the morning, leave the poem for a while, and return in the evening to correct and revise it. The image is less of sudden inspiration than of a writer returning to language and testing what it can hold. His description of poetry as a “painful struggle” helps explain why uncertainty about the result could coexist with sustained commitment to the work.
Where to begin with his poems
Mahapatra recalled that readers liked “Hunger” most, while he personally preferred the long poem “Relationship.” Sivasankaran’s profile reports that Relationship received the Sahitya Akademi award and was the first work written in English to receive it. The poem is a natural starting point for readers interested in his longer form; “Hunger” offers a point of entry through the poem readers most often favored, according to his recollection.
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He said his first poem was probably called “Girl by the Window” and appeared in The Illustrated Weekly of India. The qualification matters: this is how he remembered it in the interview, not a definitive bibliographic claim.
Mahapatra estimated that he had written about 22 poetry collections in English, nine collections in Odia, and nine books of translations from Odia and Bangla. Those are his approximate figures from the conversation, rather than independently verified totals. They point to a body of work spanning languages and roles—as poet and translator—not just a single celebrated poem.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Chandrabhaga: making space for poems
In 1979, Mahapatra started the poetry magazine Chandrabhaga because, he said, the magazines he knew were not publishing the poems he wanted to read. The decision extends his account of poetry as active work: when he could not find the writing he sought in existing venues, he created a place for it.
In the same conversation, he recalled an annual festival at Konark Temple, near Chandrabhaga Beach, held on the second Saturday and Sunday in January. That schedule is his account from the 2022 interview; it should not be taken as a confirmed listing for a current event.
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Recognition, protest and a complicated legacy
Sivasankaran’s profile reports that Mahapatra received the Padma Shri in 2009 and returned it in 2015 as a protest against rising intolerance in India. It also identifies him as one of the important poets in India writing in English, while emphasizing the Odisha roots of his poetry. Those public distinctions do not cancel the private uncertainty in his closing remark; the two belong to different dimensions of a writer’s life.
The 2024 profile was published on October 22, the date Mahapatra would have turned 96. Sivasankaran said she first spoke with him on October 22, 2022, his 94th birthday, and that their conversations continued until a few weeks before his death on August 27, 2023. The birthday framing belongs to that publication date; it is not a current-age claim.
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