Hoskoté - Vanishing acts: new and selected poems 1985-2005

Zones of Assault was published by Rupa & Co. (New Delhi & Calcutta, 1991), and included poems written between 1985 and 1991.

The Cartographers Apprentice was published by the Pundole Art Gallery (Bombay, 2000), as an edition accompanied by a suite of drawings by Laxman Shreshtha.

The Sleepwalkers Archive:Poems 19911991 was published by Single File (Bombay, 2001).

Some of the poems selected from these volumes have been revised, on occasion substantially, for the present edition.

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Acknowledgements are due to the editors of the following journals and anthologies, in which many of the new poems in this volume have appeared, sometimes in earlier versions:

Poetry Review (London), Rattapallax (New York), Fulcrum (Cambridge, Mass.), Poetry International (San Diego), Lyric Poetry Review (Houston), Akzente (Munich), the Neue Zuercher Zeitung (Zurich), Art and Thought (Bonn), Kavya Bharati (Madurai), Indian Literature (New Delhi), Mans World (Bombay), www.nthposition.com (London), http://india.poetryinternational.org (Rotterdam), www.fieralingue.it (Bolzano);

and Short Fuse: The Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry, Todd Swift and Philip Norton eds (New York: Rattapallax Press, 2002); Reasons for Belonging: Fourteen Contemporary Indian Poets, Ranjit Hoskot ed. (New Delhi: Penguin/ Viking, 2002); 100 Poets Against the War, Todd Swift ed. (Cambridge: Salt Publishing, 2003); Poems for Madrid, Todd Swift ed. (e-book, March 2004); and In the Criminals Cabinet: An Nthology of Poetry and Fiction, Val Stevenson and Todd Swift eds (London: Nthposition Press, 2004).

I would also like to record a debt of gratitude to my editor at Penguin, Ravi Singh, for his faith and patience; to Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri of Penguin, for meticulously guiding this book into print; and to my editors in the German-speaking world: Michael Krger, Angela Schader, and Stefan Weidner.

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Acknowledgements are also due to the organizers at the following venues, where I have read from these poems during the last twenty years:

The PEN All-India Centre, Bombay; Chauraha, at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Bombay; the British Council Division, Bombay; Poetry Circle, Bombay; the University of Iowa, Iowa City; Prairie Lights Bookshop, Iowa City; the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, Mass.; Downing College, Cambridge; Stella Maris College, Madras; the Kodaikanal International School, Kodaikanal; the American College, Madurai.

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Very special and affectionate thanks, as always, to Annu, Amma, and Nancy; to Indu mami and Subbu mama; to Ilija; and to Lina. For their friendship and their warm collegiality: Richard Lannoy, H. Masud Taj, Jrgen Brcan, Jeet Thayil, Vivek Narayanan, Adil Jussawalla, Todd Swift, Philip Nikolayev, Andrew McCord, Baiju Parthan, Imtiaz Dharker, Arundhathi Subramaniam, Jerry Pinto, Keki Daruwalla, Dilip Chitre, Aspi Mistry, Sampurna Chattarji, K. Satchidanandan, Kee Thuan Chye, Mehlli Gobhai, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Ashok Shahane, and Jehangir, Shirin and Aafreed Sabavala.

For their unfailing support and advice through the years: Mr & Mrs T.N. Shanbhag of the Strand Book Stall, Bombay.

For their friendship and hospitality: Tanja Trojanow, Christoph Hofbauer and Gaby Berg, Cornelia Zetzsche, and SAID in Munchen; Baird Cornell in Tutzing; Inke Arns, Jesko Hirschfeld and Claudia Wahjudi in Berlin; Kerstin Zimmermann in Dortmund; Michael McGhee and Rosemary Merriman in Stourbridge; Peter and Mary Nazareth in Iowa City/Coralville; Susan Oommen in Chennai; Angelika Fitz, Klaus Stattman and Michael Wrgtter in Vienna; Vivek and Hisako Pinto in Tokyo.

For their presence, mentor figures no longer alive: Nissim Ezekiel, Dom Moraes, Arun Kolatkar and Agha Shahid Ali.

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This book would not have been possible without a writing residency at the Villa Waldberta (Autumn 2003), which gave me the necessary repose to work on it, in the idyllic environs of the Starnberger See. Special thanks to the then director of the Villa, Verena Nolte, and to her successor, Karin Sommer; and also to Eva Schuster and Katrin Dirschwigl at the Kulturreferat, Landeshauptstadt Mnchen.

For an invigorating and congenial residency in March 2004, in Chennai, I would like to thank the staff and students of the English Department, Stella Maris College. For an equally stimulating and enjoyable residency in Madurai and Kodaikanal in August 2004, I would like to thank Paul L. Love, R.P. Nair, Premila Paul, Deborah Cordonnier and Tom Pruiksma at SCILET (The Study Center for Indian Literature in English and Translation), the American College, Madurai; and also David Stengele, Pramod and Sheela Menon, and their students at the Kodaikanal International School.

For their graciousness and generosity, I wish to record my particular thanks here to N. Ram, N. Ravi and Nirmala Lakshman of The Hindu.

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The lines by Osip Mandelshtam that act as epigraph toDecree are taken fromTwo Poems first published by Struve/Filippov, 1964, which appears in Osip Mandelshtam,