Rabindranath Tagore, known as the Bard of Bengal, was born in 1861 to an aristocratic family of social reformers in Calcutta (now Kolkata), then the seat of the British government in India. His prolific output spanned poetry, plays, songs, novels,…

Sarojini Naidu, famously known as ‘the Nightingale of India,’ was a remarkable female political activist and freedom fighter in pre-colonial India. Her poetic works are celebrated for their lyrical romanticism, capturing the beauty and diversity of Indian culture with sweetness…

Amarjit Chandan is a celebrated poet, essayist, and editor, known for his distinctive voice in contemporary Punjabi literature. Born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1946, Chandan’s upbringing was marked by both the richness of his Sikh heritage and the complexities of…

Vikram Seth is a poet and novelist whose contributions to literature are harboured in various eclectic and traditional forms. The sites of his poetry and prose are intercontinental, creating literary habitats of far away lands and cultures. In the modern…

Arundhati Subramaniam is a celebrated contemporary female poet. Born in Mumbai, 1973, she recalls, from a young age, wanting to ‘be around words – listen to them, utter them, play with them, and string them into patterns’.1.  After gaining her…

Mona Arshi worked as a Human rights lawyer at Liberty before she started writing poetry. She worked on a number of high-profile legal cases including the Stephen Lawrence case, representing Janet Alder and Diane Pretty, she also represented women fleeing…

David Dabydeen (David Horace Clarence Harilal Sookram) was born in 1955, in Berbice, Guyana. His second name, Dabydeen, is taken from his mother, Veronica Dabydeen, who raised him, along with his maternal grandparents, after her divorce. Dabydeen regards his time…

Dominic Francis Moraes (1938–2004), considered a pioneer of Indian English poetry, published nearly 30 books during his lifetime and contributed significantly to intercontinental poetic discourse through essays, articles, and critical thought. Born in Bombay, he was the son of Frank…

Celia A Sorhaindo is a poet from the Caribbean island of Dominica, where she now resides after living many years in the UK. Her poetry has been widely published in journals ranging from The Caribbean Writer to New Daughters of Africa, and longlisted for the UK National Poetry Competition (2017/18). Her first pamphlet, ‘Guabancex’ (Papillote Press, 2020) was longlisted for the 2021 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean literature, and her poem ‘Weather Conditions’ was among the winners of Poetry Archive’s WordView 2020 Collection. Her first full length poetry collection, ‘Radical Normalisation’, is due to be published in the autumn of 2022 (Carcanet Press).