Tishani Doshi on dancing, poetry, and everything in between

Tishani Doshi oscillates between writing and dancing with such grace and seamlessness that she makes them feel like one fluid art form. You can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. She can’t either, because it all exists together in one glorious homogeneity, each illuminating the other.

Through her poems, novels, and news columns, she focuses on myriad themes ranging from sexual politics, gender-based violence, travel, our relationship with our bodies, and the human condition. Reading her poems is like embarking on an expedition you know little about, the kind that is full of bends, thickets, and forks that surprise you and reveal hidden joys. However, no matter how many such adventures you may have experienced before, nothing can prepare you for where you will end up when on a Tishani Doshi poetry trail.

Ahead of the second edition of JLF Soneva Fushi, a barefoot, bespoke literary carnival that she will be attending on the paradisal island of Kunfunadhoo from May 12 to 21, she indulges a few of my questions. Her responses, like her writings, are as free-wheeling and lyrical; she discusses why she geographically distanced herself from the metropolitan centres about a decade ago, how Margaret Atwood pacified her worry about her poems not being funny, the ephemerality of happiness, and more.