Anand Thakore

Anand Thakore is at once a poet who writes in English and a Hindustani Classical Singer by profession, a formal disciple of Pandit Satyasheel Deshpande. His first collection of poems, entitled, 'Waking in December' ( Harbour Line, 2001, ISBN 81-902981-0-0), won him the outlook award for 'The Best English Book of the Year'.Thakore was educated in India and  the UK and the two cultures animate his work. His poems have a sense of line and weight reminiscent of mid twentieth century British verse, his music reaches out to Indian antiquity.

Thakore is regularly invited to read his work at literary festivals in various parts of the country. His work has appeared in numerous journals in India the Uk and the US. He lives in Mumbai where he teaches and performs Hindustani vocal music and runs a musicians' collective called 'Kshitij'

NOCTURNE

Dusk and the ghats were behind us when we reached the river.

Summer had drained it of all motion, but its grey

Surfaces were still cold and clear. I watched you shiver

As we undressed. We swam, and between the algae

The moon swam with us like a silver

Fish – then sank into the silt like a broken plate,

As your fingers ruffled the summer-still river;

Reflection made it more distant, and we had no bait

With which to catch the quick inflections of its light –

Only the taut insistence of memory;

How long it seemed till the water resettled, and sight

Pieced together again that cracked porcelain moon. We

Swam, bare as ourselves and the river we swam in –

Then deep in the shallows dead still we lay;

You will remember this now though you were looking away –

Us wading ashore through the river's wet skin,

And clouds roll below us like shoals of grey salmon.