The Enchanted Dust

The Enchanted Dust is the English rendering of Tanmaya Dhuli, a collection of Oriya poems by Pratibha Satpathy, which won her the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2001. The poems in this collection depict the spiritual experiences of the poet concerning human existence, which according to her is like a grain of ordinary dust enchanted with magical powers. The inner voice of the poems profoundly celebrates love, faith and endurance, while the lucid and lyric expressions will touch the innermost core of the readers. The language of this anthology is soaked with feelings which provide fine examples of how best the continuing tension between existence and essence can be resolved.

Pratibha Satpathy believes that a poet cannot explain in what way the chemistry of poetry is made by mixing imagination with reality. Writing poetry for more than four decades, Pratibha Satpathy is a leading poet in Oriya language and has 11 poetry collections, 7 works of literary criticism/essays and 7 translations to her credit. She has been the editor of Istahar, a leading Oriya journal, for more than 25 years. She now edits a poetry quarterly Udbhasa. Among the Awards and honours she has received are the Central Sahitya Akademi Award, State Sahitya Akademi Award, Rajiv Gandhi Sadbhabana Award, SAIL Poetry honour and N.N. Thirumalamba Award of Karnataka among others.
Raju Samal, the translator, is also a poet. He has published eight volumes of poems, four each in Oriya and English. "Samal writes short poems which speak volumes", says Khuswant Singh, the great writer of our times.

**Contents and Sample Pages**