Everything Begins Elsewhere

by Tishani Doshi

Overview

The American debut of Tishani Doshi, an Indian poet-novelist-dancer who explores the exhilarating “underworld of longing and deliverance.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781556594427
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	07/30/2013
Pages:	64
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

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 Universityin 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), is 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.

Table of Contents

I Everything Begins

Dog in the Valley 5

Ode to Drowning 6

Lesson 1 Building a Bridge between the Past and Future 11

Xuanzang Contemplates the Wonder of Sugar on His Return Home after Sixteen Years 12

Cutting Broccoli 14

Lesson 2 Learning Mudras in Bhutan 15

Turning Off the Lights 16

Falling, 1968 18

Seasons 20

Evensong 22

That Woman 24

Lesson 3 Stillness 26

The River of Girls 27

Ode to the Walking Woman 28

Another Man's Woman 30

II Elsewhere

Buffaloes 37

Michael Mangal's Dream 38

After the Rains 40

Found Poem 41

Fisher-Price Men 42

Lesson 4 Zero, or Infinity (Ramanujan) 43

Evening on an Indian Railway Platform 44

The Dream 45

The Adulterous Citizen 46

The Immigrant's Song 48

Madras Morning 50

Lesson 5 Saying Goodbye to Love in Butoh Class 51

Lines to a Lover from a Previous Century 52

The Magic of the Foot 54

Love Poem 56

Lesson 6 How Not to Age 57

Lament-I 58

Lament-II 60

Walking Around 62

Lesson 7 How to Dream a Beautiful Death 64

Homeland 66

Memory of Wales 68

The Art of Losing 70

Visiting My Parents in Summer 73

Love Poem Disguised as an Elegy 74

After the Dance 76

About the Author 78

Editorial Reviews

‘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

From the Publisher