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***Poetry and Art News Exclusive***
[FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE]
May 10th, 2026
Poetry and Art News presents an interview with Bangalore-based writer, Vaishnavi Pusapati, about Afterlife, a debut haiku collection forthcoming from Hawakal Publishers.
(Photo: Vaishnavi Pusapati)
What is your artistic process, its meaning, and context?
Afterlife emerged from years of writing haiku alongside my work as a physician and poet. Many of the poems in the collection were published across haiku anthologies such as Presence, Under the Basho, Poetry Pea, Heron’s Nest, Scarlet Dragonfly etc. The collection gathers moments drawn from lived experience. There is a surprising expansiveness in this form.
The title is a call back to Peggy Willis Lyles’s famous haiku: "into the afterlife red leaves." The book also reflects my evolving craft. Teaching haiku workshops and reading the masters have taught me so much. The book is the story of my growth and my collisions with creativity in the forms of short poetry. Ultimately, Afterlife is an attempt to gather these moments into a single space and to offer readers an experience of recognition.
What is the influence of place and surroundings on your work?
My work is strongly shaped by my immediate environment. Afterlife reflects this way of seeing. The poems frequently arise from everyday encounters rather than dramatic landscapes. In this sense, the collection is not only shaped by place but also by attention itself.
There is also an ongoing tension between familiarity and change. While my surroundings ground the work, I remain aware that a shift in landscape: a new place, a different view, can alter both perception and writing. This awareness of movement, both physical and internal, runs throughout the collection.
More about Vaishnavi Pusapati's work:
Living Poetry: A Physician’s Collision with Haiku
Hawakal Publishers:
www.hawakal.com
Keywords: haiku, contemporary poetry, minimalism, observation, memory, transience
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