‘Silence Has a Sound’: Mitra Samal’s direct articulation in her poems ensures emotional intimacy

In poetry, silence rarely means absence. It transforms itself into a space where any meaning is either given a new dimension or completely annihilated. Silence Has a Sound is situated at the centre of this paradox. This is the second poetry collection of poems from Mitra Samal, a poet from Odisha. It is divided thematically into five parts – Nostalgic Reflections, Realities, Celebrating Nature, Yearnings, and The Weight of Silence. Most of the pieces from each of the sections come across as deeply intimate and sincerely confessional and are set in a domestic sphere.

Meeting the self

Many of the recurring motifs throughout the collection are established in the first section, Nostalgic Reflections. A sense of displacement, childhood memory, and familial intimacy are some of them. The spectres of the past haunt the present and lead to fissures where time is out of joint. It is evident in “I Like Old Walls,” where the poet writes,

Then there is one
with the shadows of photo frames,
and nails where perhaps a map once hung,
a map that must be no longer valid,
with places that have changed names
and borders that have shifted.

There is also an earnest sense of longing. In “Leave,” she writes:

I may leave this place for a while,
but it will remain
with me forever.

This longing is captured in another poem, “Reminiscence”:

Oh, how it aches
to be distant from...

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