Indian poet, writer and dancer, Tishani Doshi at her session conversed openly about her childhood, her influences, women and poetry and performed a few of her pieces. 

Tishani’s poetry ranges from wittyumour as she talks about her childhood love for Patrick Swayze to gritty hardcore reality as she recites poetry about gender and sexuality.

“Girls are Coming out of the Woods is about women and violence and about how the legislation and the dialogue needs to change.” 

“Poetry for me is so powerful. Fictional work, you don’t really want it read out loud to you but poetry has so much power when you hear it read from the poet herself.” 

Speaking to us after her session, Tishani says that she is ‘very pleased with how the session went!’.

“Even though I've been to the Festival 4-5 times this was my first time doing a standalone session and I'm really happy with how it went"

We also spoke to a few audience members for their thoughts on the session; 

“It was an excellent session" - Kavinda

"I've never been to a poetry reading! I really enjoyed it" - Jean

"Tishani is such an incredible poet. I was just here on holiday and decided to come to the session. I just love how she melts dance with poetry and she gave such an incredible poetry performance" - Bea

"I actually came to the session by mistake! But it's a happy error. I really enjoyed her session immensely" - Anna 

"Lovely session. I'm a literature teacher and her work is in our syllabus so to watch her perform her poetry was amazing" - Shannon 

"An amazing session. I really loved listening to her poetry and the discussion on feminism" - Lisa

Pictures by Waruna Wanniarachchi