Columbia's Department of Art History and Archaeology is pleased to invite you to a book launch for Prof. Subhashini Kaligotla's new poetry volume, My Life Closed Twice (New Delhi, 2025). Join us on Thursday, April 2, 2026 for a reading and reception. Poets Vijay Seshadri and Purvi Shah will offer introductions, followed by a reading from Subhashini.
In My Life Closed Twice, Subhashini Kaligotla charts the long aftermath of grief, and its recursive, obsessive cadences. Drawing on premodern India’s art, literature, and history, through invented forms and received ones, in fragments, litanies, lists, and queries, the poems in this spare volume embody the psychological terrain of the grieving.
Vijay Seshadri is the author of four collections of poetry, including 3 Sections, which was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He is poetry editor at The Paris Review and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.
Purvi Shah is the author of Miracle Marks (Northwestern University Press, 2019) and Terrain Tracks (New Rivers Press, 2006). A recipient of prizes from F(r)iction and Writer’s Digest, Shah works as an anti-violence advocate and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
