International Journal of English Research

Authors
Dr. Mukul Kumar Sharma

Abstract
Jayanta Mahapatra, a physicist turned poet who is Oriyan at the core of his heart but his choice to write in English can be viewed by an uninformed reader as an output and gesture of a colonized mind for which the English Language has still been the language of the powerful. But, he has incorporated in his poetry all the postcolonial characteristics, such as, piercing quest for his own existence and identity; a strong deviation from the British poetic approach, and anxiety for Indian culture, heritage; the forging of Indian identity with images and their transfiguration into language; a recognition to facts, details, history, emotions and sensibilities that were long suppressed by force; creating an innovative idiom for poetic expression, etc. The paper justifies Mahapatra’s journey as a postcolonial Indian English poet who surprisingly subverts the erstwhile colonizer with his multiplicity of Indian themes.