• Dr. Awadhesh Kumar Mishra

Jayanta Mahapatra is undoubtedly one of the few gifted contemporary Indian-English poets. Undeniably, he has made an original contribution to Indian - English poetry within a fairy shortspan to time. He won Sahitya Akademi Award of 1981 for his long poem, Relationship, and earlier the Jacob Glatstein Memorial Award of 1975 for his poems published in Poetry, a distinguished journal of Chicago, simply vindicates his legitimate title to originality Mahapatra fortunately belongs to that category to which eminent poets as K.N. Daruwalla, Grieve Patel, Pritish Nandy, R.Parthsarathy, Arun Kolatkar, Dilip Chitre and Kamala Das belong who do not happen to teach English literature. Unlike very many Indian-English poets, he does not show the obvious influence of world poets, as he has not read much poetry in his life. Without being shy, he admits it is an interview with N. Raghavan, "I haven't read much poetry in my life. As a matter of fact, I haven't read any poetry in my life until I started writing myself. No, not even poets like Eliot OT Whitman or Tagore. I was trained to be a physicist but I have vecred away from Physics in a way." A wide spectrum of themes is depicted by Jayanta Mahapatra in his poems. His thematic concerns are various and he handled these varieties of themes like a skilled master. The excellence of words and language used by him in his poems matches with the significance of his themes. No unworthy, ordinary or trivial words find any place in his poems. Only the significant words according to the theme occur in his poems. It is quite natural that his various poems have the features of the culture of Orissa. The Orissa landscape, its cultural history and background, the social life of Orissa and the rites and rituals of the people of Orissa constitute the important and significant theme of his poetry.

Theme, Landscape, Relationship, Regional outlook, Cultural history.

"A Study of The Principal Thematic Concerns of Jayanta Mahapatra's Poetry", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.9, Issue 5, page no.l600-l603, May-2022, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2205C82.pdf

"A Study of The Principal Thematic Concerns of Jayanta Mahapatra's Poetry", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.9, Issue 5, page no. ppl600-l603, May-2022, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2205C82.pdf