Indian poets writing in English have earned their space on the global stage, forging new paths and moulding the language to suit the Indian landscape, concerns, and themes. When Nissim Ezekiel crossed new frontiers with his ‘A Time to Change’ in 1952, it was recognised as one of the first significant books of postcolonial poetry in English; decades later, however, sceptics continued to ask why Indians insisted on writing in English and not in their mother tongues. An exasperated Saleem Peeradina said to me in an interview soon after his debut poetry collection First Offence appeared in 1980, “This question should be outlawed!” Mercifully, though such discussions may still linger in some academic circles, the issue no longer merits attention, at least among poets.

This collection of English poems, ‘The Butterfly of the Cage’, the second transcreation by the author himself from his original Odia poetry collection ‘Panjurira Prajapati’ is based on varied themes and thoughts like human desire and despair, agony and aspiration, emotion and passion, rejoice and sorrow, love and hatred, belief and betrayal, sweet and sour memories, satire and irony, delusion and illusion, splendour of the nature, the philosophy of life, death and time, the untouched layers of human behaviour and instinct, apprehension for the uncertain future of man and environment due to anthropogenic activities, and even poetic representation of some scientific phenomena which rarely finds its place in poetry. Its ‘Prologue’ depicts an introduction to Poetry, English Poetry and Indian English Poetry which is no less than a research paper and a must read.

The book is dedicated to eminent Indian poet Padma Shri Dr. Jayanta Mahapatra who passed away on August 27th, 2023.