Anand Thakore

Anand Thakore (born 17 February 1971) is a poet and Hindustani classical vocalist.

Anand Thakore was born in Mumbai in 1971.

His father Sandeep Thakore was a sitar enthusiast and a disciple of the late Ustad Mohammed Khan Beenkaar.

As a child he was fascinated by Hindu Mythology and Indian classical music and dance.

His Grandmother, Kapila Thakore was an award-winning Gujarati children's writer and translator.

He spent a part of his childhood in the UK and has lived in India since then.

He was educated at Solihull School, in the West Midlands, and at Cathedral and John Connon School, Mumbai.

While in the UK, he received instruction in Western choral singing and violin.

On returning to Mumbai he studied Hindustani vocal music under Ustad Aslam Khan and Pandit Satyasheel Deshpande, senior disciple of Pandit Kumar Gandharva.

He gave his first public performance at the Vitaan Festival of Music and Dance, 1989, hosted by the Sheriff of Mumbai.

He has been giving public concerts and 'mehfils' regularly since.

While learning music he simultaneously developed a passion for English literature and various Indian languages: Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit and Braj Bhasha.

In addition to writing poetry in English, he began, in his late teens, to compose his own Hindustani compositions with Braj and Hindi lyrics.

He earned a BA in English Literature from the University of Mumbai where he also studied courses in Sanskrit literature.

He then earned an MA in English Literature from the University of Pune.

Anand Thakore has been writing verse in English since his teens.

He is the author of three books of verse Elephant Bathing, Mughal Sequence and Waking in December.

He has also authored a number of critical essays on music and poetry and a pamphlet of 'Khayal' lyrics in Hindi.

Thakore's poems first appeared in Literature alive, a British Council Journal.

His work has appeared in various national and international journals and anthologies since then.

He has read work at major literary festivals

Post-Colonial critic Bruce King points out in World Literature Today ( Vol. 75, No. 3/4, Summer - Autumn, 2001, p. 136) : "That Thakore is a classical singer shows in his imagery and complex patterns of sound, and in the texture of his verse. There is a song-like quality about his verse".

In 2001 Anand Thakore co-founded Harbour Line - a publishing collective devoted to English verse on the Indian subcontinent.

Harbour Line was founded in collaboration with poets Jane Bhandari, ( 'Aquarius',2002, ISBN 81-902981-1-9), Deepankar Khiwani ('Entr'acte', 2006, ISBN 81-902981-2-7) and Vivek Narayanan (Universal Beach, 2006, ISBN 81-902981-3-5).

The verse of Waking in December, Thakore's first book shows a reverence for definite form and an interest in classical structures like the sonnet and the villanelle, exemplified in poems like Chandri Villa or What I can Get away with.

This interest in classical forms is linked to his training as a Hindustani classical vocalist and composer.

In 2006 he received a Charles Wallace India Trust grant for an experimental music-poetry collaboration in the UK with composer and guitarist Pete Wyer.

He has a number of recorded readings with music - both Hindustani and western- some now available with his books of verse.

His poems and critical essays on music and poetry have appeared in leading national and international journals and anthologies.

His poetry in included in Anthology of Contemporary Indian Poetry ( United States ).

Jeet Thayil writes about Anand Thakore in the book The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets (Newcastle: Bloodaxe, 2008) : "Both cultures feed and animate his work. His poems have a line and weight reminiscent of mid-twentieth century British verse; his music reaches out to antiquity".

"From a child who grew up partly in England writing prose, Thakore evolved into a teenager who explored Braj lyrics, which he had to sing as a student of music. His love for poetry took him to literary greats who lived in Mumbai such as Adil Jussawalla, Dom Moraes and Gieve Patel who guided him through the jungle of words. But he considers Hart Crane as one of his earliest poetic influences ... The metre and discipline of traditional verse forms helped Thakore find a 'deeper integration of ideas and meanings.' "Free verse," he says, "was driving me crazy.

There was too much linguistic and cultural chaos in my head'." - Anupama Raju, The Hindu.

Anand Thakore was judge and a co-editor for the first Montreal International Poetry Prize (2011) with Valerie Bloom, Fred D'Aguiar, John Kinsella and Stephanie Bolster, amongst others.

Thakore's poetry has appeared in the following anthologies amongst others:

As a child, Anand Thakore learnt Hindustani vocal music, sitar and Tabla.

When the family moved to England for a period, he studied rudimentary western musical theory, and violin and sang soprano in the Solihull Chapel Choir.

Elephant Bathing (Poetrywala, 2012), Mughal Sequence (Poetrywala, 2012) and Waking in December (Harbour Line, 2001) are his three collections of verse.

He received training in Hindustani vocal music for many years from Satyasheel Deshpande and Pandit Baban Haldankar of the Agra Gharana.

He is the founder of Harbour Line, a publishing collective, and Kshitij, an interactive forum for musicians.