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Egrets, While War
Egrets, While War is a lyric field guide to grief and resilience, where attention becomes a form of devotion, and intimacy, a quiet resistance. The poems in Tishani Doshi’s fifth collection 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 Doshi's previous collection, A God at the Door, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection.
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 Doshi's previous collection, A God at the Door, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection.
- GenresPoetry
98 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 21, 2026
About the author
Tishani Doshi
17 books182 followersTishani Doshi (born 1975) is an Indian poet, journalist and dancer based in Chennai. Born in Madras, India, to a Welsh mother and Gujarati father, she received an Eric Gregory Award in 2001. Her first poetry collection, Countries of the Body, won the 2006 Forward Poetry Prize for best first collection.[1] She has been invited to the poetry galas of the Guardian-sponsored Hay Festival of 2006 and the Cartagena Hay Festival of 2007. Her first novel, The Pleasure Seekers, was published by Bloomsbury in 2010 and was long-listed for the Orange Prize in 2011,[2] and shortlisted for The Hindu Best Fiction Award in 2010.
She writes a blog titled "Hit or Miss" on Cricinfo,[3] a cricket-related website. In the blog which she started writing in April 2009, Tishani Doshi makes observations and commentaries as a television viewer of the second season of the Indian Premier League. She is also collaborating with cricketer Muttiah Muralitharan on his biography, to be published when he retires.[4]
She works as a freelance writer and worked with choreographer Chandralekha until the latter's death in December 2006.[5] She graduated with a Masters degree in creative writing from the Johns Hopkins University.
Countries of the Body was launched in 2006 at the Hay-on-Wye festival on a platform with Seamus Heaney, Margaret Atwood, and others. The opening poem, The Day we went to the Sea, won the 2005 British Council supported All India Poetry Competition; she was also a finalist in the Outlook-Picador Non-Fiction Competition.
Her short story Lady Cassandra, Spartacus and the dancing man was published in its entirety in the journal The Drawbridge in 2007.[6]
Her most recent book of poetry, Everything Begins Elsewhere[7] was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2013.
Her newest book, The Adulterous Citizen – poems stories essays (2015) was launched at the 13th annual St. Martin Book Fair by House of Nehesi Publishers, making Tishani Doshi the first important author from India to be published in the Caribbean.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tishani_...
She writes a blog titled "Hit or Miss" on Cricinfo,[3] a cricket-related website. In the blog which she started writing in April 2009, Tishani Doshi makes observations and commentaries as a television viewer of the second season of the Indian Premier League. She is also collaborating with cricketer Muttiah Muralitharan on his biography, to be published when he retires.[4]
She works as a freelance writer and worked with choreographer Chandralekha until the latter's death in December 2006.[5] She graduated with a Masters degree in creative writing from the Johns Hopkins University.
Countries of the Body was launched in 2006 at the Hay-on-Wye festival on a platform with Seamus Heaney, Margaret Atwood, and others. The opening poem, The Day we went to the Sea, won the 2005 British Council supported All India Poetry Competition; she was also a finalist in the Outlook-Picador Non-Fiction Competition.
Her short story Lady Cassandra, Spartacus and the dancing man was published in its entirety in the journal The Drawbridge in 2007.[6]
Her most recent book of poetry, Everything Begins Elsewhere[7] was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2013.
Her newest book, The Adulterous Citizen – poems stories essays (2015) was launched at the 13th annual St. Martin Book Fair by House of Nehesi Publishers, making Tishani Doshi the first important author from India to be published in the Caribbean.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tishani_...
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
August 28, 2026
Special thanks to Bloodaxe Books for providing me with a copy of Egrets, while War. My views are my own and honest. Review is/will also be available on palatinate.org.uk.
Rating: 2/5
Reviewers of poetry and lyric often seek either to encourage or dissuade the reader from purchasing the collection itself. Yet Tishani Doshi embraces abstraction to such an extent that it becomes difficult to predict whether a prospective reader will comfortably enjoy Egrets, While War: each poem invites a different interpretation, which may be either meaningful and profound or, at times, seemingly devoid of meaning. Egrets, While War is therefore a particularly polarising collection, combining moments of genuine brilliance with passages that, to this reader, verge on drivel.
But regardless of one’s interpretation of individual texts throughout the book, Tishani Doshi demonstrates consistently novel takes on the woes that we face in the late 20th and early 21st century: the scourge of war; the faint nostalgia of a far away homeland; political turmoil; climate change; human suffering. She does not stop herself from entertaining controversial matters like the Israel-Palestine conflict and one cannot help but feel like she tries to maintain active, direct conversation with the reader: from utilising line breaks to encourage a pause, an inhale; or a dramatic monologue yelled at the reader.
In Sonnet for the Dodo, Written Jet-lagged in Manchester as India and Pakistan Threaten War, Doshi beautifully creates an equivalency depicting the cruel and unpredicted extinction of the dodo bird with the scourge of war. But there is little suggestion that this is about some conflict between India and Pakistan threatening war with each other, and you cannot be able to identify this without the title. Had Doshi just left it at Sonnet for the Dodo, it would have been eloquent enough, and the additional note within the title was simply unnecessary. Why make it a part of the title? Who does it help? How is being in Manchester relevant to the India-Pakistan conflict? The reader is left wanting.
“… In the prelude
To your vanishing, was it dark then cold
Then dark like this, did you feel your feet amiss,
A country that used to be a home, unfolding.”
— from Sonnet for the Dodo, Written Jet-lagged in Manchester as India and Pakistan Threaten War
The Assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 (part of Childhood as Studio Scene) was the most beautiful: Doshi captures the reaction to the assassination from her perspective as a young girl, where she innocently watches her family flocked around the TV to listen to the news of Gandhi’s assassination and presumably its following investigation, before quickly being distracted by other things; as a naive young girl might. She goes from describing her family’s reaction, to her own childhood belief of what death constituted, to the shadows of her dolls.
Wasps at the Faucet is a further expressive piece: as she successfully places us in the mind of the eternally suffering wasp. A wasp, in the heat of summer, must carry water to cool its colony’s nest whilst toiling in the very heat of the merciless sun itself. Doshi seems to force us to picture the same thought process of a wasp, torn in cognitive dissonance between whether we would risk our own lives to protect the collective (death) or cool itself down and risk leaving the nest to overheat (thirst). But it does not matter for the wasp, as death is only guaranteed; a matter of time: should it decide to preserve itself, the nest will die and it will have no home to return to. If it chooses to fly back to the nest, it could die in the process; or could have already died in the duration of the commute. Simply put, it cannot necessarily permanently prevent it or its colony’s death, but only slow its decline.
“This is your husk of time, decide.
In the scattering between thirst
and death, what will it be?”
— from Wasps at the Faucet
A truly miserable and painful life that really puts our own struggles into perspective. For the wasp, its whole duty in life is to serve its nest and cool it down, sacrificing life and limb in the process. It sees no other purpose in its life other than what is innately programmed in itself: to serve and protect its nest and wider colony from harm.
It is not just the meaning of the text itself that is innovative but also the way some of the texts are formatted. In some poems, there are deliberate gaps in text as if to emphasise distance or encourage the reader to pause; and most notably in A Stupa For The 49th Year Of Life, the text itself is formatted like a stupa! So whilst I may not have necessarily enjoyed or understood a certain poem, I was still fascinated by the stylistic creativity employed.
But the abstract writing style throughout the texts simultaneously ultimately are in her detriment. This is epitomised in A Story Is a Stepwell Is an Underground River. I had to re-read it three times but still could not find any interpretation or meaning other than an interconnected jumble of meaningful and meaningless sentences. This is something prevalent across the book: one poem that may have a remarkable meaning to me, may have no meaning to someone else.
Indeed, some of her texts are incredible and deeply touching. But the majority are vacuous and lack meaningful depth, moving abruptly from one idea to another and presenting disconnected ‘shower thoughts’ with an air of profundity. I admired how deep and awe-inspiring some of her works could be, but I spent far too long trying to decipher what Doshi was attempting to convey, particularly when a seemingly promising line of thought would suddenly give way to an entirely unrelated subject. What might be an intentionally abstract style instead frequently felt to me like a lack of cohesion.
The over-dramatisation of Israel's role in the Israel-Palestine conflict was also seriously concerning. Doshi's portrayal is, frankly, so unequivocally condemnatory that Israel is presented almost exclusively as an agent of harm, while Palestinians are depicted as entirely innocent and helpless victims. I found this lack of balance and contextualisation troubling, especially given the complexity and sensitivity of the conflict. Whatever one's political position, reducing such a complicated conflict to an uncomplicated opposition between perpetrator and victim risks becoming counterproductive, and, in my view, detracts from the credibility of Doshi's wider political commentary.
I therefore have to give it a 2 out of 5. Doshi left a lot to be desired and I spent more time disappointed and confused than amazed and astounded. I really tried my best to look for a life-changing interpretation each time, but it was such a struggle and felt I had to pretend to be some kind of pretentiously high-brow intellectual to see any real meaning in most of her texts.
Rating: 2/5
Reviewers of poetry and lyric often seek either to encourage or dissuade the reader from purchasing the collection itself. Yet Tishani Doshi embraces abstraction to such an extent that it becomes difficult to predict whether a prospective reader will comfortably enjoy Egrets, While War: each poem invites a different interpretation, which may be either meaningful and profound or, at times, seemingly devoid of meaning. Egrets, While War is therefore a particularly polarising collection, combining moments of genuine brilliance with passages that, to this reader, verge on drivel.
But regardless of one’s interpretation of individual texts throughout the book, Tishani Doshi demonstrates consistently novel takes on the woes that we face in the late 20th and early 21st century: the scourge of war; the faint nostalgia of a far away homeland; political turmoil; climate change; human suffering. She does not stop herself from entertaining controversial matters like the Israel-Palestine conflict and one cannot help but feel like she tries to maintain active, direct conversation with the reader: from utilising line breaks to encourage a pause, an inhale; or a dramatic monologue yelled at the reader.
In Sonnet for the Dodo, Written Jet-lagged in Manchester as India and Pakistan Threaten War, Doshi beautifully creates an equivalency depicting the cruel and unpredicted extinction of the dodo bird with the scourge of war. But there is little suggestion that this is about some conflict between India and Pakistan threatening war with each other, and you cannot be able to identify this without the title. Had Doshi just left it at Sonnet for the Dodo, it would have been eloquent enough, and the additional note within the title was simply unnecessary. Why make it a part of the title? Who does it help? How is being in Manchester relevant to the India-Pakistan conflict? The reader is left wanting.
“… In the prelude
To your vanishing, was it dark then cold
Then dark like this, did you feel your feet amiss,
A country that used to be a home, unfolding.”
— from Sonnet for the Dodo, Written Jet-lagged in Manchester as India and Pakistan Threaten War
The Assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 (part of Childhood as Studio Scene) was the most beautiful: Doshi captures the reaction to the assassination from her perspective as a young girl, where she innocently watches her family flocked around the TV to listen to the news of Gandhi’s assassination and presumably its following investigation, before quickly being distracted by other things; as a naive young girl might. She goes from describing her family’s reaction, to her own childhood belief of what death constituted, to the shadows of her dolls.
Wasps at the Faucet is a further expressive piece: as she successfully places us in the mind of the eternally suffering wasp. A wasp, in the heat of summer, must carry water to cool its colony’s nest whilst toiling in the very heat of the merciless sun itself. Doshi seems to force us to picture the same thought process of a wasp, torn in cognitive dissonance between whether we would risk our own lives to protect the collective (death) or cool itself down and risk leaving the nest to overheat (thirst). But it does not matter for the wasp, as death is only guaranteed; a matter of time: should it decide to preserve itself, the nest will die and it will have no home to return to. If it chooses to fly back to the nest, it could die in the process; or could have already died in the duration of the commute. Simply put, it cannot necessarily permanently prevent it or its colony’s death, but only slow its decline.
“This is your husk of time, decide.
In the scattering between thirst
and death, what will it be?”
— from Wasps at the Faucet
A truly miserable and painful life that really puts our own struggles into perspective. For the wasp, its whole duty in life is to serve its nest and cool it down, sacrificing life and limb in the process. It sees no other purpose in its life other than what is innately programmed in itself: to serve and protect its nest and wider colony from harm.
It is not just the meaning of the text itself that is innovative but also the way some of the texts are formatted. In some poems, there are deliberate gaps in text as if to emphasise distance or encourage the reader to pause; and most notably in A Stupa For The 49th Year Of Life, the text itself is formatted like a stupa! So whilst I may not have necessarily enjoyed or understood a certain poem, I was still fascinated by the stylistic creativity employed.
But the abstract writing style throughout the texts simultaneously ultimately are in her detriment. This is epitomised in A Story Is a Stepwell Is an Underground River. I had to re-read it three times but still could not find any interpretation or meaning other than an interconnected jumble of meaningful and meaningless sentences. This is something prevalent across the book: one poem that may have a remarkable meaning to me, may have no meaning to someone else.
Indeed, some of her texts are incredible and deeply touching. But the majority are vacuous and lack meaningful depth, moving abruptly from one idea to another and presenting disconnected ‘shower thoughts’ with an air of profundity. I admired how deep and awe-inspiring some of her works could be, but I spent far too long trying to decipher what Doshi was attempting to convey, particularly when a seemingly promising line of thought would suddenly give way to an entirely unrelated subject. What might be an intentionally abstract style instead frequently felt to me like a lack of cohesion.
The over-dramatisation of Israel's role in the Israel-Palestine conflict was also seriously concerning. Doshi's portrayal is, frankly, so unequivocally condemnatory that Israel is presented almost exclusively as an agent of harm, while Palestinians are depicted as entirely innocent and helpless victims. I found this lack of balance and contextualisation troubling, especially given the complexity and sensitivity of the conflict. Whatever one's political position, reducing such a complicated conflict to an uncomplicated opposition between perpetrator and victim risks becoming counterproductive, and, in my view, detracts from the credibility of Doshi's wider political commentary.
I therefore have to give it a 2 out of 5. Doshi left a lot to be desired and I spent more time disappointed and confused than amazed and astounded. I really tried my best to look for a life-changing interpretation each time, but it was such a struggle and felt I had to pretend to be some kind of pretentiously high-brow intellectual to see any real meaning in most of her texts.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review