We decided to interview Koustov Mukhopadhyay for his brilliant poem, আমি বাবাকে দেখেছি, that won him the first position at the Wingword Poetry Competition 2025 under the Regional Category and a cash prize of INR 25,000.
Koustov Mukhopadhyay is a Marine Engineer by profession, and a poet by passion. Looking at the deep horizon and beyond the ocean has always been his inspiration. He completed his schooling at Purulia Zilla School and earned a B.Tech degree from The Neotia University. Currently, he is working with Scorpio Marine Management as a Second Assistant Engineer.
His poems are mostly profound reflections on situations and emotions he has experienced in his life. He is a multilingual writer, composing in Bengali, Hindi, and Urdu. Recently, his book, titled Naqsh-e-Pa, was published and is available as a Paperback on Amazon and as an e-book on the Bookleaf publishing website. Besides poetry, his interests also lie in football and dancing.
You write in Bengali, Hindi, and Urdu. Each language carries its own cultural weight, music, and history. How does your choice of language for a particular poem emerge? Do certain emotions insist on being voiced in a specific tongue?
First of all, Bengali is my mother tongue. So that's always my first choice of writing poems... And just as you said, there are some words in Hindi and Urdu that can not be expressed the way I want to express them in Bengali. Also, I don't know how to write Hindi and Urdu, but some poetry always inspires me to write, so I write in English fonts. Maybe the actual essence of the poetry can be felt only if it is written in the same fonts. Same as what I feel for Bengali poems.Engineering and poetry might seem worlds apart: one governed by precision and mechanics, the other by ambiguity and metaphor. Do you find that your professional discipline intrudes upon your poetic practice, or do the two unexpectedly inform and balance each other?
I don't think the same way. There is ambiguity in Engineering, and there has to be precision in good poetry. I believe poetry and Engineering are everywhere and in everything. They both have to have a balance between each other. Poetry comes from emotions such as anger, love, or loneliness, and that feeling can click on your mind at any time. It never informs or waits to trigger for a moment. It just comes. At least I feel that.
As a Marine Engineer, you spend much of your life with the ocean. You said in your bio that the view of the horizon inspires you. How do you think being at sea has influenced you in any way? Is there a difference when you write off-shore versus on-land?
Yes, for writing or any artwork, the most important thing is to stay away from chaos. Absolutely, being at sea has inspired me a lot. It taught me to think and to be calm in very adverse situations. For me, I cannot properly think or write if there is no silence. But yes, at home it is not possible all the time. So most of the poems I have written at sea are based on my emotions, at that particular time, that I was feeling. But the poems I have written on land are mostly situational-based.How did you get to know about the Wingword Poetry Competition, and what motivated you to send your poems to us? Now that you have won the prize, how do you feel when you look back on this journey?
Whenever I like a poem on Instagram, I follow that page. In the era of AI, it also shows you related and personalized advertisements. Similarly, while scrolling my feed, I saw a link to submit poems to the Wingword Poetry competition. So I opened the link, checked everything, and didn't submit. But I saved it. And I forgot about that due to a busy schedule. Maybe 15-20 days later, that link showed up again. Then I thought ok, let's submit my poems. I know that I don't even stand a chance, but why not give it a try? Also, I even forgot to check the results on 1st August. After two or three days, I remembered that the results must be out now. So, immediately, I opened the site and checked. Frankly speaking, I was looking from the bottom to see if I got any special prizes. I never imagined that my poem would get the 1st prize. I was shocked, happy, and surprised—too many feelings were rushing inside me. I refreshed the page two/three times to be sure that I had actually won the 1st prize. So when I look back at this, I think, Thank god I submitted my poems.