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In her first poetry collection since the award-winning Countries of the Body, Tishani Doshi returns to the body as a central theme, but extends beyond the corporeal to challenge the more metaphysical borders of space and time.
These poems are powerful meditations born on the joineries of life and death, union and separation, memory and dream, where lovers speak to each other across the centuries, and daughters wander into their mothers’ childhoods.
As much about loss as they are about reclamation, Doshi’s poems guide us through an ‘underworld of longing and deliverance’, making the exhilarating claim that through the act of vanishing, we may be shaped into existence again.
Everything Begins Elsewhere was followed by two further collections, Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods in 2018, and A God at the Door in 2021.
These poems move in different directions, as true poetry should. We hear in them joy and sadness, praise and lament, love and disenchantment – simultaneously. Tishani Doshi speaks courageously about herself, about her choices, about the growing shadows. It’s a beautiful book’ – Adam Zagajewski
Tishani Doshi is an award-winning poet and dancer of Welsh-Gujarati descent. She was born in Madras, India, in 1975. She received her masters in writing from the Johns Hopkins University in America and worked in London in advertising before returning to India in 2001 to work with the choreographer Chandralekha, with whom she performed on many international stages. An avid traveller, she has been trekking in the Ethiopian Bale Mountains, visited Antarctica with a group of high-school students, and documented the largest transgender gathering in Koovakam. She has written about her travels in newspapers such as the Guardian, International Herald Tribune, The Hindu and the Financial Times.
She won an Eric Gregory Award for her poetry in 2001. In 2006, she won the All-India Poetry Competition, and her debut collection, Countries of the Body (Aark Arts), won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her first novel, The Pleasure Seekers (Bloomsbury, 2010), was longlisted for the Orange Prize and shortlisted for the Hindu Fiction Award, and has been translated into several languages. Her second poetry collection, Everything Begins Elsewhere, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2012. Fountainville: new stories from the Mabinogion was published by Seren in 2013. Her third collection, Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods (Bloodaxe Books, 2018), is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry 2018 in the UK, and for the poetry category of the 2019 Firecracker Awards in the US. Her second novel, Small Days and Nights (Bloomsbury, 2019), was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize. Her fourth poetry collection, A God at the Door (Bloodaxe Books, 2021), was shortlisted for the 2021 Forward Prize for Best Collection.
Tishani Doshi lives on a beach between two fishing villages in Tamil Nadu with her husband and dogs. She is currently Visiting Associate Professor of Practice, Literature and Creative Writing at New York University, Abu Dhabi. For more information, see her website www.tishanidoshi.com.
# more poetry
Tishani Doshi
Everything Begins Elsewhere
2012
Paperback
Pages: 72
ISBN: 9781852249366
Bloodaxe Books Ltd
£10.99
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“We are homesick everywhere,” writes Tishani Doshi, “even when we’re home.”
With aching empathy, righteous anger, and rebellious humor, A God at the Door calls on the extraordinary minutiae of nature and humanity to redefine belonging and unveil injustice.
From a microscopic cell to flightless birds, to a sumo wrestler and the tree of life, Doshi interrupts the news cycle to pause in grief or delight, to restore power to language. A God at the Door invites the reader on a pilgrimage―one that leads us back to the sacred temple of ourselves. This is an exquisite, generous collection from a poet at the peak of her powers.
In an era of pandemic lockdown and brutal politics, these poems make vital space for what must come next―the return of wonder and free movement, and a profound sense of connection to what matters most. A GOD AT THE DOOR by TISHANI DOSHI invites the reader on a pilgrimage―one that leads us back to the sacred temple of ourselves. This is an exquisite, generous collection from a poet at the peak of her powers.
Tishani Doshi is an award-winning writer and dancer of Welsh-Gujarati descent. Born in Madras, India, in 1975, she received a masters in writing from the Johns Hopkins University, and worked in London in advertising before returning to India in 2001, where a chance encounter with the choreographer Chandralekha led her to an unexpected career in dance. She has published seven books of fiction and poetry, the most recent of which are Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Poetry Award and a Firecracker Award; and a novel, Small Days and Nights, shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize, the Tata Best Fiction Award, and The New York Times Bestsellers Editor’s Choice. She has interviewed over a hundred writers about the craft of writing, and has published essays in The Hindu, Granta, The National, The New York Times, The Guardian, Lithub and Corriere della Sera. She is a Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at New York University Abu Dhabi, and otherwise, lives on a beach in Tamil Nadu, India.
(. . . . .)
What if god on the other side of the wall
was equally alone and in need of company
What if we replaced god with home
What if I was ready to become nothing
What if I understood there was no me
Would you carry me to this divinity
A God at the Door
by Tishani Doshi
Format: Paperback
88 pages
ISBN: 9781556594526
2021 Copper Canyon Press
$16.00 list price
♦Forthcoming 9 November 2021
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Tishani Doshi
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Poet, writer, and dancer Tishani Doshi was born in Madras, India, to Welsh and Gujarati parents. She earned a BA from Queens College in North Carolina and an MA from the Writing Seminars from the Johns Hopkins University. After working in the fashion magazine industry in London, Doshi returned to India.
An unexpected meeting with one of Indian dance’s leading choreographers, Chandralekha, led Doshi to a career in dance. She currently performs internationally with the Chandralekha group. She is a freelance journalist, and her work has appeared in newspapers and journals such as the Guardian, the National, and the Hindu. She writes a regular column for New Indian Express and was a finalist in the Outlook/Picador India Non-Fiction Competition.
Doshi is widely acclaimed as a creative writer; her first book of poetry, Countries of the Body (2006), won a Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her other collections include Everything Begins Elsewhere (2013), Dolce Marcescenza (Sweet Decay) (2015), and Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods (2018).
Doshi’s first novel, The Pleasure Seekers (2010), was shortlisted for the Hindu Best Fiction Award and has been translated into several languages. She is also the author of Fountainville: New Stories from the Mabinogion (2013), a retelling of the Mabinogion myth, as well as two books about place and home, Madras Then Chennai Now (2013) and The Adulterous Citizen (2015). Her latest novel is Small Days and Nights (W. W. Norton, 2020).
From “The River of Girls” by Tishani Doshi the poem:
i.m. India’s missing girls
This is not really myth or secret.
This murmur in the mouth
of the mountain where the sound
of rain is born.
( . . . . . )
This is the sound of ten million girls
singing of a time in the universe
when they were born with tigers
breathing between their thighs;
when they set out for battle
with all three eyes on fire,
their golden breasts held high
like weapons to the sky.
Tishani Doshi, “The River of Girls”. Copyright © 2013 by Tishani Doshi.
Source: Everything Begins Elsewhere (Copper Canyon Press, 2013)
Her honors and awards include an Eric Gregory Award and an All-India Poetry Prize. She lives in Tamil Nadu, India.
Small Days and Nights
A Novel
by Tishani Doshi (Author)
Hardcover
$25.95
272 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
January 21, 2020
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1324005238
ISBN-13: 978-1324005230
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Tishani Doshi on Girls are Coming Out of the Woods: “I want to give this book to the people I love, and say to them, memorize this, never forget. – Jeet Thayil Each poem promises the sharpness of broken sea-shells, the smell of brine.
In this collection, Tishani Doshi inhabits the different homes: her childhood, the body, cities that were passed through, cycles of rain. There are poems of celebration and homages, as there are poems lamenting human cruelty and dispassion. This is also a book of travel and of homecoming, of familiar decay and startling, haunting discoveries of our oldest themes of love, grief, suffering and anger.”
Girls are coming out of the woods,
wrapped in cloaks and hoods,
carrying iron bars and candles
and a multitude of scars, collected
on acres of premature grass and city
buses, in temples and bars. Girls
are coming out of the woods
with panties tied around their lips,
making such a noise, it’s impossible
to hear. Is the world speaking too?
Tishani Doshi in Girls are Coming Out of the Woods (fragment)
Tishani Doshi is an award-winning poet and dancer of Welsh-Gujarati descent. She was born in Madras, India, in 1975. She received her masters in writing from the Johns Hopkins University in America and worked in London in advertising before returning to India in 2001 to work with the choreographer Chandralekha, with whom she performed on many international stages. An avid traveller, she has been trekking in the Ethiopian Bale Mountains, visited Antarctica with a group of high-school students, and documented the largest transvestite gathering in Koovakam. She has written about her travels in newspapers such as the Guardian, International Herald Tribune, The Hindu and the Financial Times. She won an Eric Gregory Award for her poetry in 2001. In 2006, she won the All-India Poetry Competition, and her debut collection, Countries of the Body (Aark Arts), won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her first novel, The Pleasure Seekers (Bloomsbury, 2010), was longlisted for the Orange Prize and shortlisted for the Hindu Fiction Award, and has been translated into several languages. Her second poetry collection, Everything Begins Elsewhere, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2012. Her third, Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, is due from Bloodaxe in 2018. Tishani Doshi currently lives on a beach between two fishing villages in Tamil Nadu with her husband and three dogs, and sometimes moonlights as a dancer.
Girls are Coming Out of the Woods
by Tishani Doshi
PBS Recommendation Summer 2018
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publication Date: 10 May 2018
Paperback £9.95
ISBN: 9781780371979
Pages: 96
Size: 234 x 156mm
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