“Water is an exploration of love for the environment and its loss.”

Water

“An unusual and exciting sequence of poems”

— Daljit Nagra, author of ‘British Museum’

Unaccomplished Cities

“musical poems that capture, alternately, the drama of the human experience and the quietude of reflection.”

— Kathryn Maris

Survival

“like loving someone on a hot summer afternoon”

Finding Home

Phoebe Stuckes, the judge for the Wells Festival of Literature’s ‘Young Poets’ International Competition’ in 2021, mentioned that she chose ‘Earth, Fire’ because it is a “moving portrait of grief” with “not a single word [...] wasted”.

Earth, Fire (after Yvonne Reddick)

“A four-legged
sinister machine in the beginning,
advancing with growth, now it can
multitask”

Child as a Piano

“that having a father
means having the luxury to be an atheist
—to not believe in the unseen or unseemly.”

Child, Father

“[A] poem lives long, longer than a person does. Longer than any person who reads or writes a poem does.”

On Beginnings: Person and Poem

“You’re worried about tomorrow
and tomorrow and tomorrow—
you want your veins / rivers
             detoxified”

The Earth as a Woman Passively Speaking

“Reading Jayant Kashyap’s poems reminded me how art, in its primal energy, can sometimes stand in for nature.”

— Yashasvi Vachhani

Bird, at the Stroke of Midnight; Pyre; Lovers; Nesting

“they're rolling mercury
on their tongues and all the books
say it doesn't touch the surface
but things, they find dark places
to accumulate— even without
touching.”

The Dog; Baying

“We sing for them songs they have never
listened to before. We leave words of grace at their bony

feet, kiss again their rusty cheeks goodbye.”

This poem was nominated for Sundress Publications’ ‘Best of the Net’ Anthology in 2023.

We only seek the blessings of those we love.

“When god put his lips to my ear and said
nothing there was no god.”

[God’s] Silence

“[I]ts formalities (mirroring couplets and stand-out images (I’ve fallen in love/with your empty chair now; I/make love with your pillow’), demonstrate the poet’s ability to match emotion with poetic-skill.”

— Julie Sampson, guest editor

After Your Death, I Know

A total of 8 poems published between 2020 and 2023 on ‘Visual Verse’, a “valuable literary archive” now maintained by the University of Newcastle’s ‘Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts (NCLA)’.

A portfolio of poems on Visual Verse

It all began with being “the third-prize winner in the Bletchley Park challenge”, and later getting “commended in the fourth Bloodaxe Archive challenge” and becoming “the second-prize winner in the ‘Poems to Solve the Climate Crisis Challenge’.”

A portfolio of poems on the Poetry Society website

“              to hold the sun —
warm, even in winter — in our hands”

2 poems in 2022: ‘In Leaving’, ‘Winter Rain’; 3 farewell poems in 2023: ‘River Haiku’, ‘Notes on Islands’, ‘Farewell / Elegy’.

JAYANT KASHYAP

Books

Selected work