Prabhanjan K. Mishra

Prabhanjan K. Mishra lives in Mumbai and is a bilingual Poet / writer. He writes in Oriya (his mother tongue) and English. He served the honorary post of president of the Poetry Circle, Bombay, an association of poets in and around Mumbai, established in 1986. Also, served as the editor to this association’s poetry journal Poiesis from 1986 to 1996. His poems have appeared in almost all the leading journals of English literature published in India and quite a few outside India. His works in Oriya regularly get placed in Oriya literally journals. He has published three collections of his English poems: VIGIL with Rupa & Co, LIPS OF A CANYON and LITMUS with the Allied Publishers. He has been placed in anthologies of English poetry published by Dr. Raj Rao, Dr. Makarand Paranjape, Jerry Pinto and Arundhathi Subramaniam combine and Manu Dash. He has won awards for his English poems – Vineet Gupta Memorial Award, organized in Calcutta and JIWE Award, organized in Gulbarga. In his review of VIGIL, the poet’s first collection of poems that appeared in the Madurai based poetry journal Kavya Bharati, the renowned literary critic John Oliver Perry wrote, “…these poems comprise as impressive a total accomplishment as anything written today, whether by older or younger poets, whether in India or abroad.” His fourth collection of English poems and the first collection of Oriya poems are in the process of getting published. Also a collection of short stories in English. He took voluntary retirement in 2006 from the service of Govt. of India, which he served in the grade of IRS.

ART GALLERY

The bare hall had turned magical,

charcoals on paper,

water-colours and acrylics.

In a snug corner, a lady

sat by the window

playing with a peacock.

Debonair and gay,

a little vaporous

in the play of lights

from the other windows.

When you approached her

she froze into a canvas

like Lot’s wife

turning into salt.

You read a poem

inscribed beneath her

annotating her land of dusk and dreams.

To your left, you noticed a painting.

A wisp of a man with a florid beard,

unfocused eyes and a brooding visage

pitched to the foreground of a pastoral scene.

You thought, this would suit the décor

on the mantelpiece in your sitting room.

In the silent gallery you shouted

for the artist and the wispy man

with the florid beard,

unfocussed eyes and a brooding visage

rose from the foreground

of the pastoral scene.

He bowed obsequiously and

your stomach churned.

In a daze you asked

for the price of the woman

without eyes and three white doves

taking off from the regions of her lips,

midriff and thighs.

The painter stated that the “DESIRE”

was not for sale.

You felt relieved.