Jayanta Mahapatra is an Indian English poet. He completed his M. Sc. in Physics from Patna University, Bihar. He began his teaching career as a lecturer in physics in 1949 and taught at various government colleges in Odisha including Gangadhar Meher College, Sambalpur, B.J.B College, Bhubaneswar, Fakir Mohan College, Balasore and Ravenshaw College, Cuttack. He is the first Indian poet to win a Sahitya Akademi award for English poetry and was awarded a Padma Shri in 2009. Some of his eminent works are A Father’s Hours 1976, A Rain of Rites 1979, The Green Gardener 1997 and Bhor Moitra Kanaphula 2011.