I have great pleasure in presenting to readers one hundred one modern Oriya poems rendered into English by Sangram Jena and Aurobindo Behera. The anthology showcases poems written by established as well as young poets in Orissa and is brought out to mark the Golden Jubilee of Orissa Sahitya Akademi.
The poems included in the anthology show how a new sensibility has expressed itself in poems written by modern Oriya poets. They introduce the reader to the richness and variety of contemporary Oriya poetry and to ways in which it has experimented with new forms and techniques and explored new themes. Needless to say that Orissa has a rich and meaningful tradition of poetry.
I take this opportunity to express my indebtedness to Sri Jayanta Mahapatra, eminent poet and translator, for contributing an insightful foreword to the anthology.
I express my sincere thanks to the translators for their judicious selection of representative modern Oriya poems. I am sure their lucid and sensitive translation of these will win for Oriya poetry a wider readership and a deeper understanding.
Wandering Words: Modern Oriya Poetry since Independence consists of one hundred and one poems, each translated from the Oriya original by Sangram Jena and Aurobindo Behera, both translators of repute. In a country where bilingual education has, in the last fifty years, become the unwavering rule, the result is a poetry in English where the poems examine what it means to be a writer in our time.
The symbolist poem could be thought of as a linguistic act of intrinsic value. In Oriya poetry this tradition was continued most overtly by Sachidananda Routroy, especially in the poems he wrote around the year of Indian independence. The poems are those very moments in which inspiration gets involved with consciousness and the unity of all things is established. To all accounts, Routroy's poetry becomes a mainstay of existence, something which picks up the fragments of our living and ultimately goes on to reveal those invisible connections between all that is living. To me, this view where man and nature can be identified as one, is particularly significant. Perhaps it seems right that this anthology begins with such a poem by Sachidananda Routroy.
But it was much later that a new generation of poets and a new protest against the burden of reality appeared. The strength of this poetry lay in its very details, in its confrontation with our mass-produced daily life, but the poetry also exhibited negative attitudes. Yet it was a vital poetry, which, besides being personal and private in its investigation, came forward into sharing social life.
Yet, in a land like Orissa, which still adheres to its age-old customs and religious rituals dependent on Lord Jagannath, the tendency towards modernism hasn't been clear and recognizable. Individualism still pervades the poems of today, as will be evident when one reads the poetry of an elder like Ramakanta Rath or Sourindra Barik. On the other hand, a poem like "Folk Tale" by Sucheta Mishra, included in this anthology, is painfully observed to produce a definite feeling of place and circumstance. Such a poem paves a way towards the experience of community.
Wandering Words should help in giving non-Oriya readers a direction into the dimensions of an adult Oriya poet's imagination. The wind, the Orissan sun and the monsoon rain pass through these poems. Readers will discover the connection between city and village, between love and hope, between joy and loss. Perhaps the first commitment of the translators has been to the truth. But often, truth itself is prone to sacrifice.
I would like to say in the end that the next few decades of the twenty-first century could witness a rediscovery of artistry in language, where clarity and coherence are combined with imaginative power and form.
Send as free online greeting card
Email a Friend
Visual Search
Manage Wishlist