We will begin with our motivations for writing. Why do we express ourselves in
words, and how do we share what with others what we have made with words? How
can we speak for our predicaments connecting with the vulnerability of others? Texts
across genres – poetry, nature writing, fiction, memoir – will be shared and
discussed. Participants will be encouraged to go out into ambient nature and
experiment with stepping out of their sensory comfort zone. Can we write without
relying on the visual and the verbal, which are our dominant modes? What can
listening to a many-voiced silence teach us?

All of us, as writers, hold on to objects, events and people to whom we attach a
special importance – as sources of magic, inspiration, fascination or fear. Such focal
points belong both to memory and to the lived present. We may treat them as

recurrent motifs, or mask them in allusions. How do we bear witness to the role they
play in our imaginative lives? As a thought experiment, participants will choose a
particular object – childhood talisman, travel souvenir, inheritance, gift or chance
discovery – and to craft a text around it, exploring both its materiality and the
resonances it carries.

We know that a traditional kind of nature-writing – whether in poetry or in prose – is
no longer tenable. Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, forests are receding,
and the monsoon can be sullen and unpredictable. Living through this climate crisis,
how do we re-engage creatively, meaningfully with the natural world. How do we
dismantle our reflexes of species sovereignty? What responsibilities must we accept
towards other species, our fellow tenants of this planet? How do we articulate these
shifts of consciousness, sensibility and commitment through our writing? The last
day of the masterclass will explore a renewal of horizons.

Ranjit Hoskote

Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, cultural theorist, translator and curator. His collections of poetry include Vanishing Acts: New & Selected Poems 1985-2005 (Penguin, 2006), Central Time (Penguin, 2014), Jonahwhale (Penguin, 2018, published in the UK by Arc as The Atlas of Lost Beliefs, 2020, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation), Hunchprose (Penguin, 2021), and Icelight (Wesleyan University Press in the USA and Penguin in India, 2023). 

Hoskote’s translation of a celebrated 14^th-century Kashmiri woman mystic’s poetry has appeared as I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded (Penguin Classics, 2011). More recently, his translation of the poems of the great 18^th-century Urdu poet, Mir Taqi Mir, has been published as The Homeland’s an Ocean (Penguin Classics, 2024). Hoskote is the editor of Dom Moraes: Selected Poems (Penguin Modern Classics, 2012), the first annotated critical edition of a major Anglophone poet’s work. His book of essays on the poet and painter Gieve Patel has appeared as To Break and To Branch: Gieve Patel (Seagull, 2024).

Hoskote curated India’s first-ever national pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2011) and was co-curator, with Okwui Enwezor and Hyunjin Kim, of the 7^th Gwangju Biennale (2008). Since 1993, he has curated numerous exhibitions of visual art, both in India and internationally: these include museum retrospectives of major artists such as Jehangir Sabavala (NGMA, Mumbai and Delhi, 2005-06), Atul Dodiya (NGMA Delhi, 2013) and M F Husain (MathafMuseum of Modern Art, Doha, 2019), as well as transhistorical research-oriented exhibitions such as The Sacred Everyday: Embracing the Risk of Difference (Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa, 2018).​​​​​​​​​

Hoskote has been honoured with such prestigious awards as the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Award, the Sahitya Akademi Translation Award, the Sanskriti Award for Literature, the S H Raza Award for Literature, and the 7^th Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Award for Poetry. He has been a fellow of the International Writing Program, University of Iowa, and has held writing residencies at Villa Waldberta, Munich; the Polish Institute, Berlin; and Theater der Welt, Essen-Mülheim.

Hoskote has been an associate fellow of Sarai-CSDS, at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, and researcher-in-residence at BAK/ basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, as well as a contributor to BAK’s long-term Former West research project. He has served on the Jury of the Venice Biennale (2015) and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Bergen Assembly, Norway. In 2022, Hoskote was Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Ashoka University.