Finding new poetry that captures some of the essence of life in 2026 is very difficult. But in the fifth collection of poems by Indian poet Tishani Doshi – Egrets, While War – we have found exactly that.
These poems deal with the personal (love and ageing) and the political (war and environmental collapse). They are woven together and infused with the symbols and methods of Indian poetry, which draws heavily on ideas of seething contradiction and change.
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That churning cauldron of chaos, into which the personal and political are melted together, will be familiar to a growing number of young people today. This is the generation watching its future dissolve amidst the death throes of the liberal world order and the capitalist system itself.
Doshi takes aim at the lies and hypocrisy of the ruling class. “They will have us believe…that the red hole in the dead man’s chest is a rare kind of flower”, she writes in a poem titled ‘Living Through the Apocalypse’. In another poem, which explicitly references Gaza, she writes “Do not believe anyone who says / We are not starving them.”
Some of her critiques are ironic and humorous. In ‘Post-atrocity Statement’ she mimics the cold vacuousness of politicians: “We support the rights and viewpoints of everyone whose rights and viewpoints may have rights and viewpoints”. She finishes with: “We uphold the sanctity of saying nothing.”
Doshi faces head-on the horror that is the modern world: capitalism in its death agony. But despite that, these are not poems of despair. Out of the chaos there are glimmers of hope and optimism struggling to break through.
In ‘Home Speaks in Many Tongues’ – a poem dedicated to a Palestinian refugee who drove ambulances in Gaza – she writes:
Now there is so much blood. Skies bereft from
so much falling, streets open-mouthed in horror.
A slow planetary grief enveloping us all.
Even now, someone is telling someone else,
I will not leave you behind. The body continues
its small revolution. This one life we slink into
like a best-loved dress, carries us over the banishment.
Wherever you may be, a door is opening.
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The title work of this collection is anchored in the middle with an image of battling forwards in spite of it all:
Our task is to march on. To rise
and leave the apple orchard, throw stones
at marauders who threaten to tear up
the carpets.
And, in ‘Conversations in the After’, she writes of renewal and rebuilding despite the death and destruction:
This poem wants to insist there is still a place – there –
in the shimmer of trees that have survived the axe,
to build ourselves again…
Similarly, in ‘Are You Awake?’, Doshi writes:
Look how one world collapses
while another rises. Morning returns
like an echo, insistent, bright.
That sentiment is the essence of revolutionary spirit. It is reminiscent of the words of the anarchist leader Buenaventura Durruti during the Spanish Civil War, 90 years ago:
“We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing in this minute.”
In the poem ‘Jeff Bezos Goes to Space and Becomes a Bhakti Poet’, Doshi brings all these threads together – anti-capitalist feeling, environmentalism, humour, and an ominous, faintly revolutionary optimism:
Look how our planet gleams
like the bud of a rare blue lotus.
It’s why bliss is always described
as a kind of burning. We begin and end
with fire. Jeff, listen, if you can.
It’s not too late. We are aglow,
and the future is coming for us.
This is poetry for people who can see the old world dying, and the new struggling to be born. It is truthful and optimistic. For those of us participating in that struggle, it feels like we too are aglow, and that the future is coming for us.
‘Egrets, While War’ can be purchased from Bloodaxe Books and other booksellers.
