Jayanta Mahapatra national award for poet Vinita Agrawal
BHUBANESWAR: Eminent poet Vinita Agrawal will be conferred the second Jayanta Mahapatra National Award for Literature.
Instituted by the Udaygiri Foundation Trust, the award, named after legendary poet Jayanta Mahapatra, is conferred every year upon a distinguished poet writing in English. It carries a cash award of Rs 50,000 and a citation.
The prestigious award will be conferred on Vinita on the occasion of the third Toshali Literature Festival 2025 in February next year. She is the author of six poetry books, ‘Words Not Spoken’, ‘The Longest Pleasure’, ‘Silk of Hunger’, ‘Two Full Moons’, ‘Twilight Language’, and ‘Eartha.’
This apart, Vinita has edited two anthologies on climate change - ‘Open Your Eyes’ and ‘Count Every Breath’. She has also edited the centennial celebration memoir on ‘Nissim Ezekiel, Poet & Father’.
Her book ‘Twilight Language’ won the Proverse Prize in Hong Kong 2021. She was also a recipient of the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize 2018 and the Gayatri GaMarsh Memorial Award for Literary Excellence, USA, 2015 and accorded a special mention in the Hawkers Prize 2019. Her work was shortlisted for the inaugural Dipankar Khiwani Memorial Prize 2021.
Vinita, one of the 20 poets to be featured in a documentary on Asian poets titled ‘Deepest Uprising, Made in Taiwan’, is also an advisory board member of the Tagore Literary Prize. Her work has been widely published and anthologised.
The first Jayanta Mahapatra National Award for Literature was given to noted poet Gopal Lahiri in the Toshali Literature Festival in February this year.