Tishani Doshi's Egrets, While War: poem features & interviews
'Egrets, While War draws 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.' – Imtiaz Dharker
Tishani Doshi's fifth collection Egrets, While War was published by Bloodaxe Books in May 2026. It is on the longlist for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 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.
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 is on tour in the UK and Ireland from 23 May to 28 June 2026 to launch her fifth collection Egrets, While War. Details on our events page here.
At some of the events she has been performing a dance/moving image/spoken word piece which she has created especially for this book. A short trailer can be seen on YouTube here.
Scroll down to see a video of her joint online Bloodaxe launch.
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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 PBS 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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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]
