about rupam baoni

About Rupam BaoniRupam 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.

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 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

‘Unchangeable’ is a poem of great wisdom by one her age. ‘Love’ reminds me of Anna Akhmatova…not bad company.” “The earnest feeling in her book is very touching to me. As poets, we must make ourselves vulnerable in speaking our most personal ideas and fears, and wishes. This is something she does very well in her poems. They are mostly without irony, and I love that quality. The poems in the section ‘He Comes When Evening Comes’ stand out as the best. That is because they have the most concrete images…’ Love’, ‘Widow’, ‘Lost Love’. When she uses real things to embody her thoughts, she is at her best…a half-drunk cup of tea, the kettle shaking on the stove. She must think of herself as a painter with words…
Jane Kenyon

(Poet & Translator)

Rupam Baoni’s intimate, startling collection burrows deep beneath the surfaces of longing. Her poems and paintings possess a dreamy, subterranean momentum.
Anita Felicelli

(Author of Chimerica and Love Songs For a Lost Continent)

Rupam Baoni’s poetry touches deep into the realm of primordial sensuality, celebrating the reverence for humanity, the precision of an organism and its functions. It’s an ode to the human body, where the metaphysical is forever tethered to the earthly, inseparable from our primal urges and fertility. A profound journey into the fascinating feminine.

Rabindranath Tagore literary Prize 2023

Rupam’s powerful voice is what the world needs today. Her writing is a perfect combination of inner vitality, social consciousness and compassion. She touches topics of daily existence in all their five senses or elements and exalts them to a sublime level.  She is a powerhouse and relevant today and tomorrow.
Dr Melissa Hardie-Budden

(MBE- Social Historian, Writer, Publisher & Founder of The Hypatia Trust)

Her new poems are the best things I have seen of hers and I like them very much.
Donald Hall

(2006 Poet Laureate of the US)

I have never been the poetic one but her poems made me sit up and muse over love, transience, and that inner beauty that exists in all of life. She has the faculty to look below the surface and beyond a usual line of vision.
Khushwant Singh in The Sunday Observer

(Writer & Journalist)

I found her poems sensitive and evocative. Rupam is a startling new voice among Indian poets. She has the capacity to get under the skin of things and empathize with her subjects in the most remarkable manner.
Prof. P Lal

(Writer & Poet)

About Rupam Baoni

statement

Writing, painting, carving are expressions of emotions frozen inside me, waiting for the right moment to jump out upon my sheets of paper, canvasses or stone. I believe in letting the kernel of any idea gestate within for as much time as it can sustain, so if there really is life in it, it will grow larger than me, explode and birth itself. I love the startling, tumultuous journeys my works take me on – realising almost always that when taking the first step one can never fully anticipate the byways or detours to the destination. The constant learning, study and practise-practise-practise is for me the fundamental strength in any creative process as this is what sees one through to the finishing line.
As a writer I’m drawn to lives, livelihoods, stories of lost civilisations, of legacies yet to be unearthed, of the arrival of newer worlds and the relationship between the old and new; to the extraordinary aspirations of individuals in the most perplexing of situations. I am moved by the image of the lone individual against a larger landscape or juxtaposed with other individuals. Writing for me is a medium through which I can reach out and touch the lives of others, feel with them, create new and perceptive worlds – for myself and for my readers. My aim is to bring out human emotions the same way a wound when touched with a fingertip brings out the pain living below the skin that protects it. I believe strongly in Hemingway’s words that as a writer ‘one should not judge, one should understand’.
As an artist, tonal variations of blues: prussian, ultramarine, cerulean; cadmium yellow against sap green, conflicts between violets and vermillion, the luminescence of quinadricone gold in sunlight – all of this and much more impels me to paint and to capture the spirit hidden within a visual experience. I have learnt traditional methods of painting and though I draw in the representational form, I am drawn to an expressionist and quite often lyrically abstract approach of articulating with colour and form. Painting is like poetry or music for me and I love the emotive power of colour and of gestural hand movements in capturing the spirit or rhythm of a thing or moment. The astonishing effects and simplicity of watercolour on paper are satori experiences for me that I can sometimes best express in haiku. My works arise from elemental responses toward organic shapes, forms, colours, light, or chromatic variations in landscape and objects, or to the visceral responses I’ve had to certain experiences.

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.

About Rupam Baoni

ancestry

The Baonis belong to the Baghela Rajput gharana of 39 generations of artists originating from the borders of Udaipur/Gujarat. In the year 1118 AD their forefathers migrated to and settled in the State of Rewa, MP, known for its patronage of the arts and culture. As suggested by the surname Baoni (Hindi) their ancestors were Rajas of 52 small territories and in addition to being remarkable warriors they were also artists, writers, musicians of exceptional talent, tracing their contribution in the fine arts back to Akbar’s court. Forerunners of the Baghelkhandi miniature painting-form (a unique genre of Rajput painting in its singular use of technique, colour and form), the Baonis have over the years diversified their pursuit in the various art forms, literature, science and made significant contributions within India and internationally.

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:

One cannot allow cerebral interferences in the flow of creation. When the fingers move along with the rhythm of the heart, the mind will unravel its own complex mysteries.’
Ancestry Rupam Baoni
Ancestry Rupam Baoni