It may be that embodied poetry and the poetry of dance are the only ways to express, as Tishani Doshi does, this moment in which we find ourselves, living in desiring bodies while it all falls apart around us, inhabited by and surrounded by the past, including past events of mass extinction that are portents of the one currently underway, the future unknowable but it too, for those who witness the present, an extinction. This present, so fleeting, so cruel and, yet, so beautiful, as ever it has been yet not ever quite like now, that is happening as she is poised in midlife, as we say, is the fulcrum from which Doshi spins an entangling web of words strung together like constellations that illuminate her grief, her desire; echoing our grief, our desire; the ends of our lives. During some re-readings — for these poems, like all great poems, must be read again, and again — I found my eyes swelling with tears of sadness and joy, so deeply did they stir me. My only regret having read them is not being able to see Tishani dance her poetry, for she does that too. 

Paris, September 2, 2026

Order Tishani Doshi’s Egrets, While War from Bloodaxe Books here.

For more on Tishani Doshi and her work, visit her website here.