about | testimonials | statement | ancestry
about rupam baoni
Rupam Baoni is a writer and artist based in London, whose work ranges from poetry, fiction, essays to watercolour, oils, acrylics and sculpture. Her collection of poems chronicles of entering my body (Hypatia Publications 2021) won the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize 2023 finalist award. It features the poems bone journey and bone island that have been shortlisted in the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize and the Bridport Prize respectively. She has been shortlisted twice in the Bridport Prize and longlisted in the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, the London Short Story Prize, the National Poetry Competition, PBS & Mslexia Women’s Poetry Contest and Frontier Poetry Prize, among others. Her short story Sky-burial published in the Wasafiri magazine was received with an “overwhelming response” by its readers, and Anatomy of Separation was among the top twelve longlisted in the 4th Estate Write Prize as well as in the Commonwealth Prize.
Her writing career kickstarted after the publication and positive response to her book Green Red & Amber at the age of nineteen. This prompted her to be invited as youngest of twenty-one international poets and writers to a seminar on “Poetry and Prose: The Lively American Arts’ organised by the U.S, Information Service to prose and poetry readings alongside the US Poet Laureate Donald Hall, Jane Kenyon, Dr Tim Hansen, Jayant Mahapatra among others. She is now an Academic Fellow at the Hypatia Trust Penzance that works actively towards bringing Women & Environment related issues to the fore and has been nominated in their Iconic Women’s Series in 2018. Her poems have appeared in the anthology: Invisible Borders: New Women’s Writing from Cornwall comprising works by twenty-three women poets including Pascale Petit, Ella Frears, Katrina Naomi and Penelope Shuttle. Her writings are also to appear in a forthcoming Volume: Diaspora and Migration: Interrogating Homeland and Identity in a World of Precarity, published by Pencraft International 2024.
She is presently completing a first novel set in New Delhi that stands on the precipice of pre-millennium India on one side and the Kargil War on the other; alongside, she is building a collection of short stories that explore the complexities of the relationship between the human body and its spirit trapped within, with the “Sky-burial” and “Anatomy of Separation” among others in it; her forthcoming book of poems decolonising the broken heart addresses the pains, aches and wounds subsisting in a postcolonial world.
She is also working on a series of watercolours and mixed media paintings where she explores light as a transformative as well as obliterating entity, for upcoming shows in London and LA.

Rupam Baoni is a writer and artist based in London, whose work ranges from poetry, fiction, essays to watercolour, oils, acrylics and sculpture. Her collection of poems chronicles of entering my body (Hypatia Publications 2021) won the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize 2023 finalist award. It features the poems bone journey and bone island that have been shortlisted in the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize and the Bridport Prize respectively. She has been shortlisted twice in the Bridport Poetry Prize and longlisted in the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, the London Short Story Prize, the National Poetry Competition, PBS & Mslexia Women’s Poetry Contest and Frontier Poetry Prize, among others. Her short story Sky-burial published in the Wasafiri magazine was received with an “overwhelming response” by its readers, and Anatomy of Separation was among the top twelve longlisted in the 4th Estate Write Prize as well as in the Commonwealth Prize.
Her writing career kickstarted after the publication and positive response to her book Green Red & Amber at the age of nineteen. This prompted her to be invited as youngest of twenty-one international poets and writers to a seminar on “Poetry and Prose: The Lively American Arts’ organised by the U.S, Information Service to prose and poetry readings alongside the US Poet Laureate Donald Hall, Jane Kenyon, Dr Tim Hansen, Jayant Mahapatra among others. She is now an Academic Fellow at the Hypatia Trust Penzance that works actively towards bringing Women & Environment related issues to the fore and has been nominated in their Iconic Women’s Series in 2018. Her poems have appeared in the anthology: Invisible Borders: New Women’s Writing from Cornwall comprising works by twenty-three women poets including Pascale Petit, Ella Frears, Katrina Naomi and Penelope Shuttle. Her writings are also to appear in a forthcoming Volume: Diaspora and Migration: Interrogating Homeland and Identity in a World of Precarity, published by Pencraft International 2024.
She is presently completing a first novel set in New Delhi that stands on the precipice of pre-millennium India on one side and the Kargil War on the other; alongside, she is building a collection of short stories that explore the complexities of the relationship between the human body and its spirit trapped within, with the “Sky-burial” and “Anatomy of Separation” among others in it; her forthcoming book of poems decolonising the broken heart addresses the pains, aches and wounds subsisting in a postcolonial world.
She is also working on a series of watercolours and mixed media paintings where she explores light as a transformative as well as obliterating entity, for upcoming shows in London and LA.
testimonials

statement
Carving directly on stone or wood has made me sentient to the characteristic of the material itself. I love the process of discovering the inherent qualities of different types of stones and of wood: soapstone, limestone, marble, alabaster, a block of teak or magnolia, walnut, and so many others in their resistance, compliance, texture and astounding beauty – all inspiring newer ideas, images, challenges, intimacies between the carver and the material. Laying down the very simple and fundamental strokes (of a place, thing or emotion) and creating a symbiotic relationship between my painting/sculpture and its viewer so they can take it from there, co-create and complete their own perceptual interpretation or primitive experience of the work, is the essence of all my creative endeavours.

ancestry
Observing the Guru-Shishya tradition of the Baonis, Rupam has trained under the distinguished painter, her father Rajendra Singh Baoni, sole survivor/recipient of the Baghelkhandi art form, who is not just a Master miniaturist but proficient in diverse genres of painting and sculpture with numerous National and International awards to his credit. He now devotes his time to maintaining the family art tradition as well as imbibing contemporary techniques and applying them to his current works. He says:

