Tishani Doshi's Egrets, While War: poem features & interviews
‘Tishani Doshi’s dextrous, vibrant and vital poems delight and shimmer. Across Egrets, While War, the range of her subjects is vast: the ancient and modern comingle with poems of personal and civic responsibility. Throughout, an aviary of sonnets addresses the birds of mythology and literature with grace and invention. Wars, historical and contemporary, provide the contexts for these powerful poems of resistance and humanity.’ – PEN Heaney Prize 2026 Judging Panel
Tishani Doshi's fifth collection Egrets, While War was published by Bloodaxe Books in May 2026. It is on the shortlist for both the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2026 and the PEN Heaney Prize 2026. This new collection is a lyric field guide to grief and resilience, where attention becomes a form of devotion, and intimacy, a quiet resistance.
The poems in Egrets, While War navigate the deep entanglements between environmental loss, ancestral memory, the slow transformations of ageing, and the devastations of war. Birds appear throughout these pages, not simply as subjects but as symbols and messengers, witnesses to war, extinction and exile. Mythic birds from the Ramayana fly alongside city pigeons and wild peacocks, forming a living archive of flight and disappearance. Here, love and desire emerge not as consolation, but as a form of radical presence – one of the last ways we remain tethered to the world. With lyric clarity and a gaze both wide and precise, Egrets, While War becomes a meditation on survival – of species, of history, of the heart.
Tishani Doshii is an award-winning poet, novelist and dancer of Welsh-Gujarati descent, born in Madras, India, in 1975. She received her master's 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, going on to perform with her on many international stages.
Her debut collection, Countries of the Body (Aark Arts, 2006), won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her second poetry collection, Everything Begins Elsewhere, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2012. Her third, Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods (Bloodaxe Books, 2018), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry 2018. Her fourth poetry collection, A God at the Door (Bloodaxe Books, 2021), was shortlisted for the 2021 Forward Prize for Best Collection. Her fifth, Egrets, While War, was published by Bloodaxe in May 2026 and is shortlisted for both the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2026 and the PEN Heaney Prize 2026.
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. She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2023.
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'In Egrets, While War, grief and beauty share the same open palm – egrets lifting through smoke, mythic birds guiding ancestry through the present – and her incandescent poems insist that attention itself is a form of love. Even as war and extinction press close, Doshi keeps turning us toward astonishment, toward the tender fact of being alive together in a world that is breaking and still unbearably radiant.' – Aimee Nezhukumatathil
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Tishani Doshi was on tour in the UK and Ireland from 23 May to 28 June 2026 to launch her fifth collection Egrets, While War.
At some of the events she performied a dance/moving image/spoken word piece which she created especially for this book. A short trailer can be seen on YouTube here.
Scroll down to see a short video of one of her performances, and to watch her joint online Bloodaxe launch.
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Tishani Doshi's fifth collection Egrets, While War is on the shortlist for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2026. An interview with Tishani features on the Forward Prize website.
https://forwardartsfoundation.org/in-conversation-with-tishani-doshi-2/
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The Tablet, 22-29 August 2026
Tishani Doshi's Forward Prize-shortlisted fifth collection Egrets, While War was given a wonderful review by Fiona Sampson in The Tablet of 22 August.
‘Fashion aside, what we mostly turn to poetry for remains something to do with beauty and meaning – what we might call the lyric impulse. Yet pure lyricism can seem indulgent, and just plain inaccurate, in a world familiar with suffering and catastrophe. […] And so, the question becomes how today’s poets can integrate a necessary lyricism – what we might call hope – with honesty about the dangerous state of the world. Very few contemporaries manage this, which is why Tishani Doshi’s Egrets, While War is such a significant work. It’s also – crucially, for the non-specialist audience – a deeply engaging, frankly beautiful read. […] Ultimately, this is a kind of praise song: for the beautiful world which continues in the face of disasters and will, Doshi predicts, survive even “the Anthropause”. Praise is the solution this radically hopeful – and occasionally very funny – book offers.' – Fiona Sampson, The Tablet
In print in the 22-29 August 2026 issue. Register to read online for free.
https://www.thetablet.co.uk/books/aglow/
PODCAST INTERVIEWS WITH TISHANI DOSHI
WritersMosaic, In conversation series, 12 August 2026
A wide-ranging discussion between Tishani Doshi and Royal Literary Fund Bridge Fellow Dr Vayu Naidu is featured in the WritersMosaic in conversation podcast which went live on 12 August 2026.
Tishani read and spoke about poems from her first three collections and ended by reading ‘Amor Mundi’ from her fifth collection Egrets, While War. The podcast began with a clip of Tishani reading the title poem from her third collection Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, which she read in full later in the podcast. She also read ‘A Memory of Wales’ and ‘The Adulterous Citizen’ from her second collection – her first with Bloodaxe - Everything Begins Elsewhere. Tishani spoke in detail about the dance performances she created for Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods and Egrets, While War.
‘Vayu Naidu talks to Tishani Doshi about the round-the-world adventures her poetry has taken her on.’
https://writersmosaic.org.uk/content/tishani-doshi-in-conversation-with-vayu-naidu/
VERVE Poetry podcast: Tishani Doshi, 16 August 2026
Tishani Doshi was interviewed for the inaugural VERVE Poetry podcast. She was in conversation with Hayley Frances about her fifth collection Egrets, While War. Tishani ended by reading her poem 'A Theory on the Origin of Language' from that collection.
‘Our first poet of the series is Tishani Doshi, and I spoke with her about her new book, Egrets, While War, published by Bloodaxe Books. Our patron, Imtiaz Dharker, describes this book as drawing “on everything from myth and family history to the metaverse, to create a word-weather, a landscape of individual imagery which we apprehend on our skin — an original and sensory exploration of beauty and loss in the environment and in the body.” And I don’t know how I could give it a better introduction.’
This 55-minute conversation is now available on Substack free of charge. A full transcript of the conversation is on the page below.
https://vervepoetry.substack.com/p/youve-got-poetry-youve-got-music
Fellow Forward Prize shortlistee Roshni Gallagher will be interviewed for the VERVE Poetry podcast in October 2026.
ONLINE REVIEW COVERAGE
The Lake, August 2026
Tishani Doshi's Forward Prize-shortlisted fifth collection Egrets, While War was well reviewed by Hannah Stone in the August 2026 issue of The Lake.
‘For me, the dominant mood of this collection is elegiac. We sense farewells to human decency and compassion, to birds on the red list, to oceans being destroyed. The quality of the writing means what while often bleak, the world we are invited into also has a wild beauty.’ – Hannah Stone, The Lake, on Egrets, While War
https://www.thelakepoetry.co.uk/reviews/august26/
REVIEW COVERAGE
Poetry Wales, Summer 2026
An excellent joint review of Tishani Doshi's fifth collection Egrets, While War features in the Summer 2026 issue of Poetry Wales. This essay review covered three recent collections.
'In Doshi’s work, nature seems to offer hope beyond human ruin — the contemporary moment, even with its overwhelming destructiveness, is condensed into the term ‘Anthropause,’ rather than the Anthropocene — nature continues in its aftermath. […] Her poetry is taut with this tension between, on the one hand, shell-shocked realities and scepticism for art’s impact, and on the other, her poetic inheritance, which is the imagery of birds, from the albatross to the ‘Two Birds that Kick off the Ramayana.’' – Matilda Nevin, Poetry Wales
In print only.
INTERVIEW WITH TISHANI DOSHI
The Madrid Review, Issue 8, Monday 8 June 2026
An interview with Tishani Doshi was featured as a full page in Issue 8 The Madrid Review, which was published in Madrid on 8 June 2026, World Oceans Day. Tishani was speaking to editor James Hartley about her fifth collection, Egrets, While War, and about the dance, film and spoken word piece she has devised to accompany the book, and which she has been performing at festivals in the UK and Ireland.
‘The new collection also extends into multimedia performance, including a film Doshi has made with performer-friends. “I was really interested in exploring the image through another medium,” she explains, “to create a texture that could work along-side the poems.” Using Commedia dell’arte masks, the work explores “visibility/invisibility and the capacity for transformation and interchangeability”. In a moment she describes as “the time of the great unmasking”, she reflects on institutional collapse and rupture, before returning to a quieter image of address: “I hope that readers will find in these poems little ladders – I look forward to meeting them on the rungs.”’ – The Madrid Review
In print only.
REVIEW COVERAGE FOR EGRETS, WHILE WAR
Mslexia, Issue 110, June-August 2026
Tishani Doshi's fifth collection Egrets, While War was given a wonderful review by Ellora Sutton at the top of her poetry review feature in the Summer 2026 issue of Mslexia magazine.
'Doshi reminds us that moments of beauty – of nature, human and nonhuman – persist. […] In ‘A theory on the origin of language’, Tishani Doshi bids her reader: ‘Now scream. Now sing.’ And this is precisely what Egrets, While War does. Her poems scream fiercely, unflinchingly of war and then, without blinking, she sings of what we might return to, what we might survive for.' – Ellora Sutton, Mslexia
In print. The issue is available online by subscription.
Poetry Book Society Bulletin, Summer 2026
Tishani Doshi's fifth collection Egrets, While War was given a brilliant review by Dave Coats in the Summer 2026 issue of the Poetry Book Society Bulletin.
‘Flowing between rage, resolve, and fierce love, Egrets, While War feels like being carefully guided through a long, dark night of the soul. A book to dwell on; a must-read.’ – Dave Coates, Poetry Book Society Bulletin
In print only. The Bulletin is mailed out to members of the Poetry Book Society.
ONLINE POEM FEATURE IN THE TELEGRAPH
The Telegraph, Poem of the Week, online Monday 1 June 2026
Tishani Doshi's poem ‘Tamil Nadu Summer Aubade’ from her fifth collection Egrets, While War was featured in Deputy Literary Editor Lucy Thynne’s ‘Five poems to read with your morning coffee’ online column in The Telegraph on 1 June 2026.
‘Poetry is her “default” way of being, she [Doshi] says, but reading these poems, I was struck by how many seemed to come out of something stronger – intense need. This is a narrator overwhelmed by the world’s wars and destruction (even though her titles are wonderfully playful: “Coming to Terms with the Metaverse, Which is Making Me Feel Old and Sad”.)’ – Lucy Thynne, The Telegraph (Five poems to read with your morning coffee), on Egrets, While War
The poem and accompanying commentary will remain online for five weeks after publication. Available by subscription.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/five-poems-to-read-on-your-coffee-break/
ONLINE POEM FEATURE IN WASAFIRI MAGAZINE
Wasafiri Magazine, online poem feature, 11 May 2026
Three new poems by Tishani Doshi were featured exclusively online on Wasafiri Magazine's website on 11 May 2026 ahead of publication of the Bloodaxe edition of Egrets, While War.
‘Sonnet for the Two Birds that Kick off the Ramayana’ and ‘Sonnet for the Chātak: Steadfast Bird of Indic Love Poetry that Subsists Only on Raindrops’ appear in the Bloodaxe edition of Egrets, While War. A late addition to the book, ‘Monsieur Tout-Le-Monde', will be published in the upcoming Indian and American editions of the collection.
https://www.wasafiri.org/content/three-poems-by-tishani-doshi/
ONLINE CONVERSATION WITH TISHANI DOSHI
Poetry London, Online Exclusive Conversation, online 8 May 2026
An in-depth online exclusive conversation between Tishani Doshi and Michael Symmons Roberts went online on Poetry London’s website on 8 May 2026. The two poets discussed one another's work and shared themes in their new collections Egrets, While War and Dog Star.
https://poetrylondon.co.uk/birdsong-in-the-shadows/
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Tishani Doshi: 'Home Speaks in Many Tongues' from Egrets, While War
Tishani Doshi gave a series of performances of poems from her fifth collection Egrets, While War at festivals in Britain and Ireland in summer 2026, including several presentations combining poetry, dance, music and film. This clip of her dance interpretation of the poem ‘Home Speaks in Many Tongues’ was recorded during her event at the Jaipur Literature Festival London at the British Library on 7 June 2026.
JOINT ONLINE LAUNCH EVENT
Tuesday 19 May 2026, online launch event
Tishani Doshi and Jennifer Lee Tsai joined us for this launch event for new May 2026 titles. Patricia Smith was originally advertised as taking part but was unable to due to a family emergency. Both Tishani and Jennifer celebrated the publication of their new books by reading poems from them and discussing their work with each other and with the host, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley.
It is now available to watch via YouTube. Tishani read first in each set.
[13 May 2026]
