Jayant Kashyap is the author of three pamphlet-length collections of poetry: ‘Survival’ (Clare Songbirds, 2019), ‘Unaccomplished Cities’ (Ghost City Press, 2020) and ‘Notes on Burials’ (Smith|Doorstop, 2025) which won the Poetry Business New Poets Prize 2024, judged by Holly Hopkins. He has also published a zine, ‘Water’ (Skear Zines, 2021), won the ‘Young Poets International Competition’ at the Wells Festival of Literature in 2021 and a Toto Award for Creative Writing (English) in 2025. One of his poems was also presented at the 2021 United Nations Climate Conference. Kashyap, at different times, has served on the masthead at Quarterly West, Surging Tide Magazine, The Adroit Journal and more, and his work has appeared in Magma, Arc, Acumen, POETRY and Poetry Wales, and been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and for Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net Anthology twice.
Notes on Burials (2025), published by smith|doorstop as part of their New Poets List, won the Poetry Business New Poets Prize 2024.
“An archaeological dig, a visit to an imagined London, puppies that come back from the dead. In Notes on Burials Jayant Kashyap makes a series of journeys: real, mythological and etymological as he navigates what is lost and what is buried. Kashyap’s poems of love and remembrance reach out to collective losses, human and environmental, in a series of disappearing acts and excavations that take us from broken childhood patio to a snowboarder in an avalanche.”
“In these tender poems, definitions, etymologies and repetitions perform a kind of excavation, digging to the root-places but also layering back up, hand over hand, word over word, to build a language of grief that feels fractured and true.”
— Miriam Nash, poet, All the Prayers in the House
“Jayant Kashyap’s Notes on Burials asks the reader to consider different types of burials and retrievals, including personal and etymological burials, in cool, reflective poems.”
— Holly Hopkins, poet, The English Summer
“[Notes on Burials] was easily my most anticipated of the year and it far exceeded any expectations… What an unforgettable, transcendent collection of poems.”
— Imogen Wade, poet, Girl, Swooning
Poems from Notes on Burials have appeared in good places, including Poetry London, Poetry Northwest, the Bombay Literary Magazine, Miracle Monocle and Couplet Poetry. Beginning mid-July, I’m sending out signed copies to anyone and everyone interested (₹474 / £5.5 + postage). Please get in touch if you’d like a copy or two.
“Full of soul. Like a warm hug.”
— Eloise O’Dwyer-Armary, poet, on Goodreads
“Beautifully-articulated reflections on language, mortality, history and climate change. Highly recommended!”
— Corinna Board, poet, Arboreal
This zine was published as part of the 2021 series of zines by Skear Zines. Order it here for £5 (+p&p)!
“Water is an exploration of love for the environment and its loss. The idea always was to go through on paper what we’ve done to the environment. From a simple act of deforestation to what it led to on a whole has been devastating so far, and that’s just not it. This is what I’m making efforts to discuss here.”
“This zine is both a love letter to nature at times and at other times – or even at the same time – a call to our better nature, focussing on what some of our cruel acts have led to.”
“[Kashyap] presents a search for an ecological balance between nature and society, lamenting the current state of the earth and how those in positions to rectify the issue choose instead to thoughtlessly make things worse.”
— mesal on Goodreads
This micro-chapbook has been published as a part of the 2020 Ghost City Press Summer Micro-Chap Series. Download it for free here! (The site allows donations to be made for this title to go directly to the author.
“Transcending history, these are undeniably visceral poems. They shed light on the murky engine which is humanity, often fuelled by violence and indecency, and ask us to consider our place within it.”
— Russell Jones, poet, Cocoon
“An unusual and exciting sequence of poems that dares to ghostly go through time and place and revive cities and nations at points of key struggle.”
— Daljit Nagra, poet, British Museum
“In his well-thought and coherent collection, Jayant Kashyap, is, quoting one of his own poems, “retelling the tales all of us knew something about.” Every poem is a mark on the vastness of the world’s memory, and he is joining them, episode by episode, with a lot of care and poetic talent, so you find yourself re-reading these poems, again and again, reflecting and contemplating, finding yourself compassionate, becoming “an ounce more of love.””
— Hanna Komar, poet, Recycled
“Despite the core themes of this sequence, Jayant’s writing is anything but bleak.”
— Vic Pickup, in a review of Unaccomplished Cities on Everybody’s Reviewing
“It’s a chapbook I’ll read again and again. Writing about tragedies (especially “other people’s” tragedies, though I feel we share them all) is extremely difficult to do and Jayant has achieved it here. Brilliant stuff.”
— T. L. Evans, poet, third-prize winner, 2016 National Poetry Competition, UK
His debut chapbook, Survival, first came out in 2019 from NY-based Clare Songbirds Publishing House. Order it here!
“Jayant Kashyap conflates the beautiful with the demonic in musical poems that capture, alternately, the drama of the human experience and the quietude of reflection. These wise poems, which perform the connection between joy and loss, deliver an immediate impact but also linger in mind.”
— Kathryn Maris, poet, The House with Only an Attic and a Basement
“For a first-time poet, the reader would witness Jayant’s work mature from quixotic to dystopian to hopeful, exploring the hidden fissures of one’s private universe in constant dialogue with the dichotomies of the real world. In a rare moment, the outside meets the inside. Compelling and emotionally charged debut!”
— Simran Keshwani, author, Becoming Assiya: The Story of the Children of War
“Jayant Kashyap’s first collection is a voice rising out of a grim reality of exploitation, violence and loss. Sometimes tragic, sometimes searching, the poems of Survival reach toward hope and a redefinition of identity. The poems ask those who ‘walk the road, up and down, in high / boots, heads straight’ to look around and not ignore what needs to be addressed in one’s own society. The poems ask us to save each other and ourselves, to ‘know how one’s made, / to learn to decipher how destroyed; // to stop you from being that something / Vile.’”
— Lisa Stice, poet, Uniform
“Jayant Kashyap walks this world with his eyes wide open. With every breath, every step, he notices things that others overlook. His writing is a subtle balancing act of introspection and extrospection — unfailingly observant, intuitive and incisive. Survival is a collection of poetry that stays with us long after we have finished reading, and heralds the emergence of a fiercely talented new writer.”
— Darren Richard Carlaw, editor, StepAway
“From heartache to moments of astonishing worldly wisdom, Jayant Kashyap’s poems stopped me in my tracks more than once. He is master of the heart-stopping observation and arresting image. Here is one of my favourites from his new chapbook Survival: ‘The road is full of perfume. Urine. Bile. / Death.’”
— Anne Casey, poet, out of emptied cups
“In Survival, Kashyap has created poems which sing to the heart of anyone who has loved and lost. These verses lie close to the bone and resonate on the human level.”
— Russell Jones, editor, Shoreline of Infinity
“With this debut collection, Kashyap goes for the jugular on issues of violence and redemption, yet with the lightest touch that reveals beauty and tenderness in the broken world he creates. Prepare to be swept away by the stories and voices he brings to life.”
— Jamie Houghton, poet, burn site in bloom
“These tiny gems demand your attention. In an instant they will break and repair your heart, leaving you waiting for Jayant Kashyap’s next bit of beautiful brevity. Here economy of words pairs with intensity of emotion to provide a read you’ll want to devour again and again.”
— Allison Landa, author, Bearded Lady
Get in touch: jayantkashyap174 (at) gmail (dot) com
• background image and cover design (Unaccomplished Cities) by Sania Salman Dar
Jayant Kashyap 