Pooja Nansi (b. 1981)
BIOGRAPHY
Pooja Nansi is a poet and educator who believes in the power that performance can lend to the written word. She has published two collections of poetry; Stiletto Scars (2007) and Love is An Empty Barstool (2013). She also co-edited SingPoWriMo: The Anthology (2014), and co-authored Local Anaesthetic: a Painless Approach to Singaporean Poetry (2014), a teacher’s resource for Singaporean poetry. She has also participated in poetry projects such as Speechless with the British Council in 2009, where she engaged in a month long tour of the UK to explore issues surrounding freedom of speech.
From April 2013 to February 2018, she curated a monthly spoken word and poetry event called Speakeasy at Artistry, which has showcased both emerging and established poets from places as diverse as Burma and Botswana. She also runs the Singapore chapter of Burn After Reading, a collective started for young emerging poets (aged 16-24) who are encouraged to write, read, perform and publish as widely as possible (the original London chapter has been run by poet Jacob Sam-La Rose since 2011).
In December 2018, she and Shridar Mani organised and produced the minority voices festival Other Tongues as a Youth Poet Ambassador Public Programme. She has also been appointed as the Festival Director of the Singapore Writers Festival from 2019 onwards.
Since 2009, she has also been one half of the spoken word and music duo The Mango Dollies along with singer-songwriter Anjana Srinivasan. As an educator and writer, she believes strongly in making poetry relevant to the lives of the young people she comes in contact with. In 2016, she received the Young Artist Award.
Author Photo © Jon Gresham. Author Biography © Pooja Nansi. All rights reserved.
