26 Facts About Ranjit Hoskote

Ranjit Hoskote was born on 1969 and is an Indian poet, art critic, cultural theorist and independent curator.

Ranjit Hoskote has been honoured by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, with the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Award and the Sahitya Akademi Prize for Translation.

In 2022, Hoskote received the 7th JLF-Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Award for Poetry.

Ranjit Hoskote was born in Mumbai and educated at the Bombay Scottish School, Elphinstone College, where he studied for a BA in Politics, and later at University of Bombay, from where he obtained an MA degree in English Literature and Aesthetics.

Ranjit Hoskote began to publish his work during the early 1990s.

Ranjit Hoskote's work has been published in numerous Indian and international journals, including Poetry Review, Wasafiri, Poetry Wales, Nthposition, The Iowa Review, Green Integer Review, Fulcrum, Rattapallax, Lyric Poetry Review, West Coast Line, Kavya Bharati, Prairie Schooner, Coldnoon: Travel Poetics, The Four-Quarters Magazine and Indian Literature.

Ranjit Hoskote has translated the Marathi poet Vasant Abaji Dahake, co-translated the German novelist and essayist Ilija Trojanow, and edited an anthology of contemporary Indian verse.

Ranjit Hoskote has translated the 14th-century Kashmiri mystic-poet Lal Ded, variously known as Lalleshwari, Lalla and Lal Arifa, for the Penguin Classics imprint, under the title I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded.

Ranjit Hoskote's poems bear the 'watermark of fable': behind each cluster of images, a story; behind each story, a parable.

Ranjit Hoskote's metaphors are finely wrought, luminous and sensuous, combining an artisanal virtuosity with passion, turning each poem into a many-angled, multifaceted experience.

Ranjit Hoskote has written about the place of poetry in contemporary culture.

Ranjit Hoskote has been associated with the Poetry Circle Bombay since 1986, and was its president from 1992 to 1997.

Ranjit Hoskote was an art critic and senior editor with The Hindu, from 2000 to 2007, contributing to its periodical of thought and culture, Folio.

Ranjit Hoskote has written major essays on other leading Indian artists, including, among others, Gieve Patel, Bhupen Khakhar, Akbar Padamsee, Mehlli Gobhai, Vivan Sundaram, Laxman Shreshtha, Surendran Nair, Jitish Kallat, the Raqs Media Collective, Shilpa Gupta and Sudarshan Shetty.

Ranjit Hoskote has written a monographic essay on the Berlin-based artists Dolores Zinny and Juan Maidagan.

Ranjit Hoskote has returned often to the theme of the "nomad position" and to the polarity between "crisis and critique".

Ranjit Hoskote has speculated, in various essays, on the nature of a "futurative art" possessed of an intermedia orientation, and which combines critical resistance with expressive pleasure.

Ranjit Hoskote was co-curator of the 7th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea, collaborating with Okwui Enwezor and Hyunjin Kim.

In 2011, Ranjit Hoskote was invited to act as curator of the first-ever professionally curated national pavilion of India at the Venice Biennale, organised by the Lalit Kala Akademi, India's National Academy of Art.

Ranjit Hoskote titled the pavilion "Everyone Agrees: It's About To Explode", and selected works by the artists Zarina Hashmi, Gigi Scaria, Praneet Soi, and the Desire Machine Collective for it.

Ranjit Hoskote was a member of the international jury that selected Armenia as recipient of the Golden Lion for best national participation at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015.

In 2023, Ranjit Hoskote was part of the six-person search committee for the artistic director of Documenta's 2027 edition.

Ranjit Hoskote is a defender of cultural freedoms against the monopolistic claims of the State, religious pressure groups and censors, whether official or self-appointed.

Ranjit Hoskote has been involved in organising protest campaigns in defence of victims of cultural intolerance.

Ranjit Hoskote has been a Visiting Writer and Fellow of the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa and was writer-in-residence at Villa Waldberta, Bavaria.

Ranjit Hoskote has held an Associate Fellowship with Sarai CSDS, a new-media initiative of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, and is in the process of developing, jointly with Nancy Adajania, a new journal of critical inquiry in the visual arts.