Effable Nature in Unheard Stories: Tishani Doshi’s Poetics of Discovery

Abstract

This article aims to study the multiple nature metaphors used in Tishani Doshi’s poetry to convey messages of understanding and epiphany. Born in 1975 in Madras (now Chennai), Doshi is an Indian author and academic who has gained indisputable reputation as a novelist and poet, with other cultural and artistic interests like dancing and writing journal articles. She is especially devoted to narrating the urges of contemporary human existence, and to defending class, gender, and racial rights violated by capitalist patriarchal anthropocentrism, all while embracing the aesthetic beauty of artistic creation as a weapon to change the world. Therefore, in her writings, Doshi makes use of subtle environmental elements (with an emphasis on animal and vegetal metaphors) to be able to speak about the ineffability of being, without discarding ideological urges and liminal tensions. Thus, Doshi pushes to the limit the essence of poetry in a self-quest to discover essential truths and cultural nuances. Hers is therefore a poetics of revelations, darkened by the oxide patina of everyday conventions and stereotypes, that needs to be polished and moulded in the hands of bards.