Bio

Author of five books of poetry, - Twilight Language (Winner of the Proverse Prize 2021), Two Full Moons (Bombaykala Books), Words Not Spoken (Brown Critique), The Longest Pleasure (Finishing Line Press) and The Silk Of Hunger (AuthorsPress), Vinita is an award winning poet, editor, translator and curator. Joint Recipient of the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize 2018 and winner of the Gayatri GaMarsh Memorial Award for Literary Excellence, USA, 2015. She is Poetry Editor with Usawa Literary Review. Her work has been widely published and anthologised. Her poem won a prize for the Moon Anthology on the Moon by TallGrass Writers Guild, Chicago 2017. More recently her poem won a special mention in the Hawker Prize for best South Asian poetry. She has contributed a monthly column on Asian Poets on the literary blog of the Hamline university, Saint Paul, USA in 2016-17. In September 2020, she edited an anthology on climate change titled Open Your Eyes (pub. Hawakal). Most recently she co-edited the Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English 2020-21 (Hawakal). She judged the RLFPA poetry contest (International Prize) in 2016 and co judged the Asian Cha’s poetry contest on The Other Side in 2015. She was featured in a documentary on twenty women poets from Asia, produced in Taiwan. She has read at the FILEY Book Fair, Merida, Mexico, Kala Ghoda Arts Festival among others. She is on the Advisory Board of the Tagore Literary Prize. She has curated literary events for PEN Mumbai. Read more about her at www.vinitawords.com

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Contact

e: vinitawords@yahoo.co.in

w: vinitawords.com

Vinita Agarwal’s poems seem to reach for something that lies just beyond their grasp. This search emerges through, and sometimes despite, the fevered accumulation of image, through ‘muttering thoughts’, through ‘the moss and lichen’ of daily distraction. It is a search for what might lie beyond ‘acquired language’, beyond the ‘crates and cartons’ of conveniently packaged lives. Lurching, backpedaling across time, without resorting to easy answers or ‘hybrid alloy’ platitudes, these are poems waiting to be delivered to ‘the doorstep of who we are’. - Arundhathi Subramaniam

Geographies both intimate and expansive flow through Vinita Agarwal’s poetry. Whether conjuring the visceral sights and smells of Varanasi or the contours of an emotional landscape, the maps she draws are suffused by subtle sensuality, animated by a passionate feminism and shot through with stark grief as well as deeply felt compassion. Between these Two Full Moons lies life in a myriad shades of light and dark.

-Sophia Naz, Pushacart Prize Nominee, author of Peripheries, Date Palms & Pointillism

"Over the years Vinita has had many individual poems published in journals and so on, but this is her first volume of collected poems. She decided to include some older poems so as not to, “miss any step in her poetic journey,” we the readers are fortunate she made this decision, as nor will we miss out on these exquisite gems.It has been an enlightening and humbling experience reading Vinita's, Words Not Spoken and I cannot recommend this book highly enough both for lovers of fine poetry, librarians, and educators teaching poetry at any level."

Rob Harley, Writer, Artist, Academic Reviewer, Australia, robharle.com

"This is a wonderfully varied, lavish storehouse of memories, insights and acute observation that speak of a life lived to the full, with an open and ambitious heart. Here, amidst an impressive array of different stylistic approaches, there is a real feeling and understanding of the natural world, the patterns and rhythms of life – of childhood, of time passing, of love found and lost, of history itself and one soul’s journey within – and all observed with a knowing and sensitive eye that is at times startlingly original in its ability to capture the moment, the very essence of human experience. Indeed, a real treat awaits you all, dear readers…"

Scott Hastie, Poet and Writer, London www.scotthastie.com
 

"Vinita Agrawal’s poems dramatise the moments of everydayness in the miniscule human universe inhabited by the poet and all of us. The poet through her consummate style, mastery of language and freshness of poetic approach turns each poem into a form that we read to enjoy the moments of discovery and poetic art. Each of her poem is an invention."

Abhi Subedi, Kathmandu, Nepal 
Poet, literary critic, playwright and professor of English, PhD. Author of over two dozen books.

"Frankly, your talent is in fine blossom. The title poem, the first poem, and many others I took for a second and third read- which is a sure indication that they appeal to me dearly and so directly."

Gopikrishnan Kottoor, Writer, Editor, http://poetrychain.webs.com