Birds flit in and out of Tishani Doshi’s fifth poetry collection, Egrets, While War: “emerald-bodied” parakeets; “soft and earthbound” dodos; “limitless feathery blue” peacocks; Martha, the very last passenger pigeon in the world who died in 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo, aged 29; egrets, those “feathered dinosaurs”, even an archaeopteryx, believed to be a transitional species between reptiles and birds, fossilised in a shallow lagoon. While these winged creatures have been in her poems for a long time, in this collection (published by HarperCollins), they are present in a different way, says the award-winning poet, writer and dancer over a Zoom call from Paramankeni, the coastal village near Chennai where she lives. “It’s not just that birds happen to fly into the poem, but they’re actually quite active in the making of the poem.” And, as anybody who reads about birds will know, there are millions of things that are just amazing about them, believes Doshi. “Just seeing its flash of colour is a joyous thing, and when you are faced with images of such horror, having this image of lightness or colour, even if for a brief moment, is uplifting.” Edited extracts from the conversation:Grief, in its different forms, whether solastalgia, Weltschmerz or anticipatory loss, lies at the core of this anthology, which draws deeply from what is happening in the world right now. Could you tell us more?