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    Everything Begins Elsewhere
    Everything Begins Elsewhere
    Everything Begins Elsewhere
    Ebook85 pages28 minutes

    Everything Begins Elsewhere

    By Tishani Doshi

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    About this ebook

    In this, 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 new 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. '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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloodaxe Books
    Release dateMar 27, 2014
    ISBN9781780370767
    Everything Begins Elsewhere
    Author

    Tishani Doshi

    Tishani Doshi was born in Chennai. She is an award-winning poet, journalist, essayist and novelist. Doshi has published seven books of fiction and poetry, most recently Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, which was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award 2018. She is the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award for Poetry, winner of the All-India Poetry Competition, and her first book, Countries of the Body, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2006. Her debut novel, The Pleasure Seekers, was shortlisted for the Hindu Literary Prize and longlisted for the Orange Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Small Days and Nights was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize 2020. Doshi is also a professional dancer with the Chandralekha Troupe. She lives in Tamil Nadu, India, with her husband and three dogs. tishanidoshi.com

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      Book preview

      Everything Begins Elsewhere - Tishani Doshi

      I

      EVERYTHING BEGINS

      Everything begins elsewhere, he knows that: dawn, Christmas, love, beauty, terror, the wind, the sky, the horizon, his own soul. It begins far in the woods, or out on some windy field by the sea. He wants to be there, not here: he wants to be where things begin, and he is so close, he is so near.

      JOHN BURNSIDE,

      A Lie About My Father

      Dog in the Valley

      Last night

      I heard a dog

      in the valley

      puncturing the hills

      with a sound

      from a long

      time ago.

      It was the sound

      of a man and woman

      falling out of love,

      the sound of a century

      caught in the dark –

      barking, barking.

      A deep-throated howl

      made under stars,

      made against death,

      insisting there are drums

      underground,

      cymbals in the clouds,

      a music that goes on and on

      because someone

      somewhere

      is listening.

      Ode to Drowning

      Is it or is it not

      the cold monsoon

      bearing the shape

      of my dark lord,

      speaking of his cruelty,

      his going away?

                            NAMMALVAR

      I

      This is an ode

      to be sung

      in the latest hour of night

      when rain clouds

      have gathered

      over shingled roofs

      and blue-skinned gods

      with magical flutes

      seduce the virgins to dance

      For there can be no love

      without music

      No rain

      without peacocks

      perched

      in branches

      of sandalwood trees

      with plumes

      of angels

      and voices of thieves

      pleading for their loves

      to return

      II

      If rain signals

      the lover’s return

      then I am lost

      in the desert

      burning

      like the brainfever bird

      looking for images of you

      through mesquite

      and teak

      because there’s no sign

      of you

      or what I know

      to be as you

      only clouds

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