Elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, London. Signing with Lord Byron's pen photo: the RSL and Adrian Pope
JULY 2023
What is this haunting quality of a doll that has outlived childhood? If I gave Tom to a child, would he become animated again and, therefore, less creepy? Would that child be like one of the brats Baudelaire wrote about, poking at his stuck eye, looking for his soul? -- a new essay on dolls, published in Aeon
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Language is never just about what is being said; it is also about how it is held.
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What is the first measurement of time? A heartbeat, or the silence before?
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DOUBLE VISION -
A RADIO ESSAY FOR BBC 3
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"Poems don’t murder people. Dictators do."
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Poems are not paid the big bucks to be responsible, thankfully. When I think of poetry, I don’t think of responsible Rimbaud, or responsible Lal Ded, or responsible Rilke. In most iterations of what a poet can be, it has involved some kind of standing at the margin or vision that is not necessarily within the realms of responsibility.
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A GOD AT THE DOOR IS SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 FORWARD PRIZE FOR POETRY
‘Poetry can leap across time with just a line’
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At the deepest level I think of sexuality as desire, and that has not just to do with what is erotic, but to do with creation itself. What drives us to make a work of art, to create anything? It is fullness, a being in love, exuberance, against the face of all that we find unbearable, and the movement is the journey between these inner and outer worlds.
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Breath has to do with believability. The more unbelievable something is, the more we reach for our mouths.
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The idea of a neutral breast in India? A breast just casually hanging around, being a functional exocrine gland, enjoying the sun? Impossible.
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"BABY" | A SHORT STORY COMMISSIONED FOR BBC RADIO 4
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HOW TO WRITE AN ELEGY IN A YEAR OF DYING | ESSAY FOR SCROLL.IN
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SMALL DAYS AND NIGHTS IS SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE
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INTERVIEW
WITH SOUTHEAST REVIEW
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GIRLS ARE COMING OUT OF THE WOODS IS SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 TED HUGHES AWARD!
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INTERVIEW WITH
STANCE ON DANCE
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REVIEW IN THE GUARDIAN
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Visitors to Ethiopia often remark on its quality of timelessness. Part of it has to do with the way it was isolated for so long, how steeped it is in tradition. But the real reason time is different here is because in 1582, when the most of the world switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian, Ethiopia decided not to. And so sunrise starts at 1 o’clock, Christmas falls in January, and it can successfully advertise 13 months of sunshine in the year.
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INTERVIEW WITH LITHUB
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ESSAY FOR VOGUE: DEC 2018
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ESSAY FOR MAGNUM PHOTOS: JAN 2019
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ESSAY FOR GRANTA: DEC 2018
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"Tishani Doshi's third collection, Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods (Bloodaxe), chilling conjures an uprising of dead women who refuse to be silent victims of male violence...." Sandeep Parmar
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READER'S DIGEST TOP 10 BOOKS
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SPOTIFY PLAYLIST FOR
GIRLS ARE COMING OUT OF THE WOODS
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TEN QUESTIONS WITH THE HAY FESTIVAL
What do you want readers to take away from the collection? There’s light and dark in these poems – decapitated marigold, Patrick Swayze’s perfect bottom, a pack of poor poisoned dogs, gunny bags of love. I want the reader to be able to hold these dichotomies and perhaps to believe that poems can be a way not only of insisting on joy, but reclaiming everything that has been lost. read more
What do you want readers to take away from the collection? There’s light and dark in these poems – decapitated marigold, Patrick Swayze’s perfect bottom, a pack of poor poisoned dogs, gunny bags of love. I want the reader to be able to hold these dichotomies and perhaps to believe that poems can be a way not only of insisting on joy, but reclaiming everything that has been lost. read more
Girls are Coming out of the Woods makes it to the Forward Prize's Highly Commended List |
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William Dalrymple Talks about our Cross-generational friendship in the August 2018 Issue of Vogue
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Rita Dove selects "RAIN AT THREE" from Girls are Coming out of the Woods for the NYT MAGAZINE (AUG 30, 2018)
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GIRLS ARE COMING OUT OF THE WOODS FEATURED ON BBC'S THE VERB
Ian McMillan is joined by Kirsty Gunn, Gaël Faye, Tishani Doshi and Emma Jowett.
Ian McMillan is joined by Kirsty Gunn, Gaël Faye, Tishani Doshi and Emma Jowett.
JUNE 2018: GIRLS ARE COMING OUT OF THE WOODS FEATURED ON THE GUARDIAN'S HAY PODCAST
May 2018:
Talking about Girls are Coming out of the Woods on BBC's FRONT ROW with Ian Mckellen, Julia Raeside and Tony Nourmand
Talking about Girls are Coming out of the Woods on BBC's FRONT ROW with Ian Mckellen, Julia Raeside and Tony Nourmand
TISHANI IS FEATURED ON THE MAY COVER OF HARPER'S BAZAAR INDIA WITH TAHMIMA ANAM AND FATIMA BHUTTO
"I struggle against the construct of women writers. I love the sisterhood but it can feel like a ghettoisation. No one says: Look! here’s this wonderful anthology of male writers! So, why should we do it for women? Because there’s something about reading the collective experiences of women together that can be empowering....So we have to make our space. To forge our own ancestries. And when, like Kamala Das, we are criticised for that too-muchness that women writers are accused of—too much menstruation, too much about grandmothers, too many treacherous men—we forge on and make poetry undead. And we’ll do it in whatever fashion we see fit—barefoot and stomping or on the tippie tips of our Jimmy Choos.
"I struggle against the construct of women writers. I love the sisterhood but it can feel like a ghettoisation. No one says: Look! here’s this wonderful anthology of male writers! So, why should we do it for women? Because there’s something about reading the collective experiences of women together that can be empowering....So we have to make our space. To forge our own ancestries. And when, like Kamala Das, we are criticised for that too-muchness that women writers are accused of—too much menstruation, too much about grandmothers, too many treacherous men—we forge on and make poetry undead. And we’ll do it in whatever fashion we see fit—barefoot and stomping or on the tippie tips of our Jimmy Choos.
AN INTERVIEW WITH SHE THE PEOPLE
I’m either writing poetry or I’m writing prose. Never both at the same time. So, ideas get manipulated into whatever form I happen to be working with. Rarely, an idea can be saved and used differently in both genres. The thing about ideas is that they often strike at inopportune moments and there’s no way of recording them, so they vanish. I used to think ideas that didn’t stay weren’t worth remembering, but at my rate of forgetting, I feel heartbroken about all those lost possibilities.”
I’m either writing poetry or I’m writing prose. Never both at the same time. So, ideas get manipulated into whatever form I happen to be working with. Rarely, an idea can be saved and used differently in both genres. The thing about ideas is that they often strike at inopportune moments and there’s no way of recording them, so they vanish. I used to think ideas that didn’t stay weren’t worth remembering, but at my rate of forgetting, I feel heartbroken about all those lost possibilities.”
AN INTERVIEW WITH NATHALIE HANDAL
THE WRITER & THE CITY / MADRAS-CHENNAI
Q. What is the most extraordinary detail, one that goes unnoticed by most, of the city?
A. How sneaky it is. If you stay long enough, you realize she has strapped you down with ropes of marigold. She has lulled you into a kind of comfort, so it becomes difficult to leave. She rewards only the faithful. READ MORE
THE WRITER & THE CITY / MADRAS-CHENNAI
Q. What is the most extraordinary detail, one that goes unnoticed by most, of the city?
A. How sneaky it is. If you stay long enough, you realize she has strapped you down with ropes of marigold. She has lulled you into a kind of comfort, so it becomes difficult to leave. She rewards only the faithful. READ MORE
MONSOON POEM IS PUBLISHED
IN THE POETRY FOUNDATION &
POETRY MAGAZINE'S SUMMER
2017 ISSUE
photo: rohit chawla
January 2017
10 writers at the Jaipur Literary Festival on books that changed them
in VOGUE
“An aunt gave me a battered copy of Neruda’s Selected Poems when I was sixteen and I have carried that book everywhere with me. Even though I think there is huge unevenness in Neruda’s poems I can’t deny that he was the one who led me down the path to poetry.”
10 writers at the Jaipur Literary Festival on books that changed them
in VOGUE
“An aunt gave me a battered copy of Neruda’s Selected Poems when I was sixteen and I have carried that book everywhere with me. Even though I think there is huge unevenness in Neruda’s poems I can’t deny that he was the one who led me down the path to poetry.”
SEPTEMBER 2016
I talk to PBS about an old poem "the dream," which was made into a video poem by Babe Elliott, and about houses and gates and fear.
“You think you live in one kind of community and then… you realize that there are huge rifts in society that come out of fear— fear that has been artificially created and manipulated.”
I talk to PBS about an old poem "the dream," which was made into a video poem by Babe Elliott, and about houses and gates and fear.
“You think you live in one kind of community and then… you realize that there are huge rifts in society that come out of fear— fear that has been artificially created and manipulated.”
SEPTEMBER 2014
"Visiting My Parents in Summer"
featured on NPR's Morning Edition
HEAR IT HERE
"Visiting My Parents in Summer"
featured on NPR's Morning Edition
HEAR IT HERE
EVER SEEN A MOTIONPOEM?
Babe Elliot Baker's surreal collage of images gives Indian poet Tishani Doshi's folksy "Dream" a futuristic resonance....
WATCH IT HERE
Babe Elliot Baker's surreal collage of images gives Indian poet Tishani Doshi's folksy "Dream" a futuristic resonance....
WATCH IT HERE