Ranjit Hoskote

Ranjit Hoskote belongs to the younger generation of Indian poets
who began to publish their work during the early 1990s. He has been
seen as extending the Anglophone Indian poetry tradition established
by Dom Moraes, Nissim Ezekiel, A.K. Ramanujan and others, through
“major new works of poetry”. His work has been published in numerous
Indian and international journals, including Poetry Review (London),
Wasafiri, Poetry Wales, Nthposition, The Iowa Review, The Four Quarters
Magazine and Indian Literature. His poems have also appeared in German
translation in Die Zeit, Akzente, the Neue Zuercher Zeitung, Wespennest
and Art & Thought / Fikrun-wa-Fann. He is the author of four collections
of poetry, has translated the Marathi poet Vasant Abaji Dahake, co-translated
the German novelist and essayist Ilija Trojanow, and edited an
anthology of contemporary Indian verse. His poems have appeared in
many major anthologies, including Language for a New Century (New York:
W. W. Norton, 2008) and The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets
(Newcastle: Bloodaxe, 2008). Hoskote has also translated the fourteenth century
Kashmiri mystic-poet Lal Ded, variously known as Lalleshwari,
Lalla and Lal Arifa, for the Penguin Classics imprint, under the title I,
Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded. This publication marks the conclusion of a
twenty-year-long project of research and translation for the author.

Commenting on Hoskote’s poetry on the Poetry International website,
the poet and editor Arundhathi Subramaniam observes: “His writing
has revealed a consistent and exceptional brilliance in its treatment of
image. Hoskote’s metaphors are finely wrought, luminous and sensuous,
combining an artisanal virtuosity with passion, turning each poem into
a many-angled, multifaced experience.”

As a literary organiser, Hoskote has been associated with the PEN All India
Centre, the Indian branch of International PEN, since 1986, and is currently its
general secretary, as well as Editor of its journal, Penumbra.

Hoskote was an art critic and cultural commentator, and a senior
editor with The Hindu, from 2000 to 2007, contributing to its periodical of
thought and culture, Folio, as well as to its editorial and op-ed pages, and
its prestigious Sunday Magazine.

Hoskote is a vocal and articulate defender of cultural freedoms
against the monopolistic claims of the State, religious pressure groups
and censors, whether official or self-appointed. He has gained many
awards, grants and residencies, including Visiting Writer and Fellow
of the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa (1995),
was writer-in-residence at the Villa Waldberta, Munich (2003) and
won First Prize in the British Council / Poetry Society All-India Poetry
Competition, 1997.

Hoskote currently lives and works in Mumbai.

(2020)