Hamayat Ullah Emon's poetry collection Fenaphul has received the Oitijjhya-Shantanu Kaiser Literary Award 2025. The book draws on the metaphor of a delicate floating flower to explore childhood memories and existential themes. Its subtle imagery and rhythmic style have drawn comparisons to introspective cinema.
Hamayat Ullah Emon, a young poet, has garnered recognition with his book Fenaphul, which won the Oitijjhya-Shantanu Kaiser Literary Award 2025. The collection features 64 untitled poems, numbered sequentially, that evoke rural Bangladesh through lightweight images of fields, rivers, prayers, family, animals, and village rituals. The title refers to fenaphul, a small flower that floats on muddy village ponds, symbolizing fragility and endurance as it spreads across water without sinking.
Reviewers note that the poems function like a continuous cinematic frame, capturing childhood and existence without heavy vocabulary or strict poetics. Memories spread silently, much like the flower, creating a sense of belonging while hinting at existential emptiness, particularly the disconnection felt in moving from rural to urban life. Emon's work questions adulthood, responsibility, and urban pressures through intimate reflections.
The recurring address "Tumi" (You) shifts identities across poems, representing a beloved, salary, the poet's mother, or even the fenaphul itself. Examples include: "Ami nogno, mathay dhorechhi alo, dingulote tomay" (I stand naked, holding light upon my head, carrying you through the days); "Maash furale tumi eshe darabe jani, khule dibe boshobasher tension" (I know you will arrive when the month ends, easing the tension of survival); and "Khopa tule bhangchho keno tumio" (Why are you loosening your hair and breaking apart as well?). Another haunting line is: "Dakho shomudrer dike, machher nirobota" (Look toward the sea—the silence of the fish), evoking a meditative silence akin to the atmosphere in Robert Eggers's 2019 film The Lighthouse.
Cultural details like Sufi devotion, harvest fields, and family meals serve as emotional anchors. Women appear as symbols of tenderness rather than desire, and the father figure emerges through domestic images. While the lack of individual titles may challenge recall, the book ultimately spreads its quiet reflections across the reader's mind, mirroring the fenaphul's persistent growth.
Sakib Ahmed, correspondent at Jahangirnagar University, praises the collection for its refined rhythm and profound sense of human emptiness.