Ranjit Hoskote once wrote to me the following, “I recall reading, once, that many of the great friendships of the Renaissance were, in actuality, epistolary ones. Given the geographical distances and political turbulences involved, some of these individuals might have met only a few times in their lives, but the intensity of their friendships - their mutuality - was conducted through letters and the sharing of thoughts and feelings. Sanskrit words carry across the centuries, to gloss such moments: abhijnana, re-cognition, the translation of half-glimpsed connections into persuasive affinities; sahridaya, meaning 'aesthete', but meaning, literally, 'of the same heart'.”
When I was young, I had a palpable sense that I needn’t have connections in the world that were immediate and regular, but would be happy, if not better served, by friends of considerable character and intelligence who I would see from time to time, crossing swathes of the planet, and staying close through writing. I aspired to this, growing up in rural Devon and Cornwall and feeling small and trapped. When I think of the finest fortune my mode of writing has brought me, roving, organising, collaborating as I have, I think it is the meeting of people like Ranjit. He is a brilliant poet, a translator, a theorist, a curator and a critic. His work, across these mediums, is generous, subtle, and constantly insightful
Ranjit published a book in 2018 with penguin in India, called Jonahwhale. It has now been released in the UK, with Arc, entitled The Atlas of Lost Beliefs. I wrote a small piece on the book … “What is each poem in the world but a moment of land lost upon the ocean of language itself? We must then navigate ourselves through poets like Ranjit Hoskote and books like Jonahwhale. As ever before, through his imagistic, complex, dazzling poems, Hoskote’s grand grounded intelligence, and the width of his learning comes concentrated into brilliant mediations of what poetry can do when reflecting upon an essential theme of human culture. For reading Jonahwhale it is clear to any reader the poet’s name is Ocean, and these poems are both the water and the sea creatures, with this book as our raft.”
It’s a really excellent volume and we’re lucky to have it out in the UK. The book can be picked up from Arc here https://www.arcpublications.co.uk/books/ranjit-hoskote-the-atlas-of-lost-beliefs-604
