Notes on Burials

by Jayant Kashyap

Winner of the 2024 New Poets Prize, judged by Holly Hopkins

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.

A corker.
— Rachel Curzon

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

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

Notes on Burials sits comfortably alongside the work of Seamus Heaney and Anne Carson.
— The Madrid Review

Notes on Burials excavates memory and mortality with an archaeological precision. The speakers in these poems face death unflinchingly, ethnographically and etymologically. Through ancient burial rites, fire and water, from the Styx to the Vaitarani, Egyptian and Norwegian mythology, birds and rebirth, this pamphlet considers how to “dissolve a body / of its past”. Kashyap seeks the truth of grief and urges us to finally accept that “we are all dying”. A worthy and thought-provoking winner of the 2024 New Poets Prize.
— Alice Kate Mullen, PBS Autumn Bulletin 2025

Notes on Burials is thoughtful, tightly woven, and rich with ideas that keep circling back in new ways. It is the kind of collection that invites rereading, not because it’s obscure but because it rewards reflection. These are poems that stay with you, prompting you to return and search again for meaning in their careful, deliberate lines.
— eche poetry

The etymology of words plays much more than a passing role in Jayant Kashyap’s award-winning new collection for Poetry Business: his journey into the katabatic underworld of ritual and cultural observance is illuminated, at every turn, by recourse to the guideposts of language. Insinuating words, and their meanings, directly from the dictionary and into the text of his poems, Kashyap mediates an otherwise profoundly intransigent meditation.
— Steve Whitaker, The Yorkshire Times

36 pages, Paperback

First published June 8, 2025

About the author

Jayant Kashyap is an Indian poet, microbiologist and biomedical engineer. His third pamphlet, Notes on Burials, was a winner of the Poetry Business New Poets Prize, judged by Holly Hopkins, in 2024. The Madrid Review noted that the pamphlet “sits comfortably alongside the work of Seamus Heaney and Anne Carson.” Kashyap has also published a zine, Water, with Skear Zines. He was a winner at the Wells Festival of Literature in 2021, and presented a poem at COP26. Kashyap won a Toto Award in 2025.

Reviews

[Eloise O’Dwyer-Armary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full of soul. Like a warm hug

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. Longer review in progress...

[Corinna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully-articulated reflections on language, mortality, history and climate change. Highly recommended!

[Richard Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Jayant first connected with me through social media years ago, he’d just started writing and publishing poetry, and one of the first things he told me was that he wanted to be an accomplished poet and was doing everything he could to achieve it. I admired his tenacity. As I know, from being gung ho myself, achieving success with such a niche form of writing is hard work and can grind you down after a while. So, I have to commend him. Many years later, he’s still at it, as passionate as ever, and winning prestigious awards.

This new pamphlet. Notes on Burials, won The Poetry Business’ ‘2024 New Poets Prize’, and within the first pages it becomes clear why. As its title suggests, these deft poems make up a cohesive sequence which explores life and death, and more specifically the ritual and symbolism of burials and what they mean for different people, cultures, and even dogs who refuse to part with their offspring:

…believing they’re just asleep
an unresponsive god

(From ‘but dogs don’t want their puppies buried –‘)

The pamphlet is a journey of highs and lows, celebrations and grievances. Drawing upon etymology, Jayant is able to claw away the soil of each grave plot and, in some cases, plough beneath the surface of the water, to reveal layer upon layer of meaning and connection between words and imagery. The use of ‘Notes’ is doubled-down upon, as the poet utilises this exploration of words, and certain lines read dictionary-like,

…even after death our bodies
must be heavy (from old English hefig, from German heben: ‘heave’,

‘lift up’)…

(From ‘Carrying’)

Jayant also springboards from the work of other poems and texts to produce his own reincarnations, as well riffing off of a Tweet asking if birds fly for fun:

…birds peck at worms in
the logs before fire

embraces the logs of wood.

(From ‘Pyre’)

Reading ‘Notes on Burials’ feels very much like following the poet as he makes notes in his moleskin on his current excavation of death (and life). Highly recommended.

Buy your copy here: https://poetrybusiness.co.uk/product/...

Also available on Amazon.

[Imogen Wade · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Notes on Burials' won the New Poets Prize, judged by Holly Hopkins, but despite the competition success I tried to go in without preconceptions, ready to make up my own mind. I was already familiar with Jayant's work, including the incredible 'Finding Home' published by the Poetry Foundation, so was curious to see which poems he'd chosen and how he'd assembled them.

The collection is interested in interrogating definitions and etymologies, but this isn't just linguistic musing: it allows us to see things anew. Familiar words, rituals and feelings are rediscovered. The collection has a sweeping, cohesive theme, and then each poem uses words, line breaks and poetic structure with precision and delicacy. Beware of startling phrases: "snow is a different form of murder -"; "having a father / means having the luxury to be an atheist"; "kissed your name on the surface of water"; "Luna din (moon fortress)".

These poems have a spiritual dimension to them (with their talk of souls, gods, graves, fire), and explore interactions between the material and the immaterial. One of the strongest images that stayed with me after reading was the contrast between the depths of a grave and the soaring height of a bird's flight. There is also an irreverence here; one poem uses a tweet as an epigraph, and another tells of a king who "discovered a temple, and narcissism".

The verve and deftness the poet concludes 'elements of history' with was incredible, one of several moments that showcased the true level of this poet's skill. What really made the pamphlet shine for me was its soulfulness. It is written by a human being standing in the dizzying gap between the soil and Heaven, with a pen in their hands. This is an unforgettable collection of poems that I would recommend to any reader of contemporary poetry.

[Lisa Stice · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems enter the most tender, quiet places of the heart. To give word to those who have passed and to the smallest, yet most beautiful, moments of life means to keep safe all that we love: nature, memories, relationships...