It is a rare pleasure for a teacher to hold in his hands the first English collection of a student he has watched grow within the corridors of the Department of English, University of Chittagong. Tonmoy Datta Mishu came to me not merely as a student of literature but as a young man restlessly committed to the word- as editor, organiser, filmmaker, and now, poet. Every Word Matters arrives, therefore, not as a surprise but as a fulfilment; and its epigraph “Sometimes you read a poem, / But most times you neglect the words!” is at once the book’s confession and its quiet manifesto. These thirty-eight poems ask of us the oldest and most difficult courtesy in reading: attention.

Md. Takit Mallik
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Chittagong
July 2026