latest writings Archives - Rupam Baoni

finalist in Rabindranath Tagore Prize 2023

AdminJulia — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 13:08:06 +0000

‘chronicles of entering my body’ has been shortlisted in the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize. This prize is a literary honor in India conferred annually to published works of Indian authors (residing in India or abroad) in novel, short stories, poetry and drama.

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.

— Tagore Prize

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unripe fruit at the window – COMING SOON!

AdminJulia — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 12:08:38 +0000

‘unripe fruit at the window’ is a full-length book of poems and artworks (a Red River Publication) by Rupam Baoni.

praise for ‘unripe fruit at the window’

Language, in Baoni’s deft hands, turns to liquid – blood, tears, rivers – and flows between contradictions – “the lulls between” – of knowing and unknowing, homing and unhoming, growing and dying. This corpus of poems, bursting with cacophonous colour and splendour, are full of flesh, breath and bones; they demand to be read with your entire body. I grieved with Baoni, and basked, too, in the glory of a life lived and loved.

Sana Goyal

Editor of Wasafiri and Book Critic

In this brilliantly sensory collection, Rupam Baoni strikes fire and light. These are visceral bodily poems, ripe with colour, bright with love.

Katrina Naomi

Poet and Translator

Rupam Baoni’s poems are explorations of intensely felt love and loss, united by a profoundly embodied reimagining of the self. This may be as river, tree, or ecosystem, but also – startlingly – as bone or as its own detachable body parts. It is as if she speaks from deep inside a process of metamorphosis.

Jane Griffiths

Poet and Critic

Rupam Baoni gets down to the bone of the matter, straight away: the matter that is life, love and loss. Water turns to light, light to colour and colour to pain and renaissance. Her poetry appears in an osmotic drama with her sketches. Her words tell histories and geographies like rosary beads. These are words that had died in silence and slow deafness, now reborn as expression. Hearken.

Debashish Lahiri

Poet and Editor

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longlisted in the 4th Estate Short Story Prize 2022

AdminJulia — Sat, 05 Aug 2023 11:51:15 +0000

The short story ‘Anatomy of Separation’ longlisted in the Guardian and 4th Estate Short Story Prize 2022.

‘Anatomy of Separation’ is the title story from Rupam’s forthcoming short story collection. Based on real friends’ lives, it is a story about a transgender woman’s struggle to not surrender to false identities and protect her Hijra Community in Pune, India.

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poetry reading at the National Poetry Library

AdminJulia — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 11:50:24 +0000

Southbank Centre, National Poetry Library, Level 5, Blue Side, Royal Festival Hall.
Wednesday 3 August 2022, 8pm.
www.southbankcentre.co.uk

A poetry and dance performance organised in collaboration with The Hypatia Trust and Makina Books. In performances interspersed with dance, Rupam Baoni and Supriya Kaur Dhaliwal explore themes of love and loss coexisting between the human body and the earth.

NPL Coordinator: Karen Smith
Curated and hosted by Vankshita Mishra

National Poetry Library · Mapping the Body

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‘chronicles of entering my body’ book launch (in-person)

AdminJulia — Tue, 01 Aug 2023 12:05:41 +0000

The launch of ‘chronicles of entering my body’ at The Hypatia Trust with a Q&A hosted by Linda Cleary.

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