Tishani Doshi

Shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award 2018

Poetry Book Society Recommendation

Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods is an unflinching collection of poems that weave between topics from violence against women to time and memory. Tishani Doshi's third full collection in English blends visceral power with artistic elegance, re-imagining form as it sifts through detail and emotion. It follows two earlier, highly praised collections, Everything Begins Elsewhere, published by Bloodaxe in 2012, and her debut, Countries of the Body, winner of the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Tishani Doshi was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award 2018 for Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods and for her accompanying dance performance of the title poem.

Tishani Doshi was shortisted for the Ted Hughes Award 2018 for Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods and for her accompanying dance performance of the title poem.

'The poet revels in a love of language; its capacity for ambiguity, for awe, to express emotional fragility. Sometimes playful and ambivalent, this is an invariably profound and excavating experience in its search for meaning.' - Linton Kwesi Johnson, Canon Mark Oakley and Clare Shaw, Judges of the Ted Hughes Award 2018

‘Tishani Doshi’s third collection, Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, chillingly conjures an uprising of dead women who refuse to be silent victims of male violence... Elsewhere, there are frank and moving poems about the experience of ageing and pressures on women to reproduce, as well as a playful imagined meeting with a young Elizabeth Bishop in Madras and an ode to Patrick Swayze.’ – Sandeep Parmar, The Guardian (Poetry Books of the Year 2018)

‘Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods is one of the rare poetry collections that wholly captivates its reader from page to page. It absorbs its reader through tides of rage, defiance and peace; line by line it swells with Doshi as she experiences the every day, the violent, the unjust.’ – Beth Cochrane, The Skinny (Best Books of 2018)

'I’ve already read Tishani Doshi’s poetry collection Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods but I know I’ll return to it many times. One of the poems talks about poets ‘holding the throat of life/ till all the sunsets and lies are choked out/ till only the bones of truth remain’ - that’s precisely what Doshi does in this intelligent, elegant, unflinching collection. It’s very much a collection for this moment in history, but one that will endure long past it. ' Kamila Shamsie, The Guardian (Best Summer Books 2018)

‘The title poem is a haunting vision of retribution… Doshi’s poem is exceptionally timely, although it was written before the rise of the #MeToo movement. It’s impossible not to cheer the boldness and liberation enacted by much of this book, and to be stirred by its bravery. To paraphrase one interviewer, Doshi is writing the anthems of her generation.’ – Sandeep Parmar, The Guardian

‘There are flashes of brilliance throughout Tishani Doshi’s wide-ranging third collection – not least in the “bright desperation” of the title poem, one of several responding to the violence so often enacted on women’s bodies, particularly in India, where the author lives.’ – Tristram Fane Saunders, The Daily Telegraph

'Although published before the #MeToo movement came up and opened avenues for discussions on gender in the popular consciousness in ways unprecedented, Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods by Tishani Doshi aligns well with the movement. The collection was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award 2018 and deals with the themes of violence on women’s bodies, time and memory, rain, death, poetry, and love... the collection warrants multiple rereads simply for the feverish fervour and sheer force of the verse.' - The Telegraph India (nine powerful books of poetry)

'Tishani Doshi’s Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods is an unflinching, tender, witty and wise collection of poems about danger, memory, beauty, time and tide, and transient but treasured joy.' - Mark Reynolds, Bookanista

'How can I express my delight on reading Tishani Doshi’s Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods? It is a tour-de-force, both revealing and elusive, with a gorgeous, inventive use of sensuous description, and a commanding yet amusing speaker.' - Zoë Brigley Thompson, Magma

‘Doshi’s work is like the music of Shostakovich; it gives no quarter but compels you to listen anyway and sometimes there is a beautiful lyricism to chase away the scary bits… There are words and phrases that will stay with you long after you close the book.’ – Frances Spurrier, Wales Arts Review  [on Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods]

'Doshi has impressive skill when telling stories and reflecting on current events, but also excels at crafting breathtaking few-word phrases...Her work is timely, personal and lushly eloquent. Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods is a highlight of the last few years and must not be missed.' - Rebecca Foster, Wasafiri

'In Girls are Coming out of the Woods, Tishani Doshi combines artistic elegance with a visceral power to create a breathtaking panorama of danger, memory, beauty and the strange geographies of happiness. This is essential, immediate, urgent work and Doshi is that rare thing, an unashamed visionary who knows that, "while you and I go on with life / remembering and forgetting, / the poets remain: singing, singing".' – John Burnside

'I admire these poems because they are masterly formal inventions. But I return to them, again and again, for the elegy and the urgency and the prophecy. I want to give this book to the people I love, and say to them, memorize this, never forget.' – Jeet Thayil

'These are powerful haunting poems about rain, death, poetry and love, with the sea pounding unrelentingly in the background. Whether it is about discovering one’s first white hairs or an ode to Patrick Swayze, about seeking ways to surrender "sun-scarred lives" to the tidal dark or to welcome "orphaned slippers, Styrofoam, fossil of crab" washed up by the insomniac ocean, these poems welcome the wildly assorted flotsam of daily detail and transmute them into the greater strangeness of poetry. Elegiac and fevered, Tishani Doshi’s poems search for ways to make their peace with tide and temporality, with fragility and violence, even as they celebrate that there is really "no end to unknowing".' – Arundhathi Subramaniam

Tishani Doshi reads Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods and other poems

Tishani Doshi reads and talks about ‘Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods’ and six other poems from the collection: ‘Everyone Loves a Dead Girl’, ‘Contract’. ‘Ode to Patrick Swayze’, ‘Find the Poets’, ‘A Fable for the 21st Century’ and ‘Poem for a Dead Dog’. Neil Astley filmed her reading poems from the book before her reading with Pascale Petit at Ledbury Poetry Festival on 5 July 2018.

Tishani Doshi dances Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods in Chennai

Tishani Doshi performs her dance version of ‘Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods’ at a TEDx event in Chennai in March 2018. The poem is read by her with music composed by Luca Nardon (www.lucanardon.it). She also read two other poems from Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods at this presentation, ‘Contract’ and ‘Find the Poets’ which you can view via this link.

Tishani Doshi dances Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods at the Dylan Thomas Birthplace

Tishani Doshi performs her dance version of ‘Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods’ in the Dylan Thomas Birthplace, Swansea, in July 2018. Filmed by Gareth M Davies (www.seebehindthemoon.com). Poem read by her with music composed by Luca Nardon (www.lucanardon.it).

Tishani Doshi: Everything Begins Elsewhere

Tishani Doshi introduces and reads five poems from Everything Begins Elsewhere: 'The Art of Losing', 'Walking Around' (after Neruda), 'The Memory of Wales' (a sestina), 'The Adulterous Citizen' and 'Homecoming'. Neil Astley filmed her reading from the book after her Ledbury Poetry Festival reading in July 2012.

Ireland: Click here to order from Books Upstairs in Dublin

North America: Copper Canyon Press

India: HarperCollins