In Conversation with Hemant Joshi

In this exclusive conversation, Ethos Literary Journal (ELJ) engages with Hemant Joshi—poet, visual artist, and former creative director—regarding his latest work, Drukkavya. Published by Granthali and recently launched in July through the NCPA’s Page to Stage initiative, Drukkavya presents a rare convergence of language and image, offering a collection of visual poetry in Marathi that is simultaneously minimalist, surrealist, and philosophical. Through the interview, Joshi reflects on his artistic lineage, the fluid relationship between words and form, and how this pioneering work positions itself within the evolving landscape of contemporary Indian, particularly Marathi, literature. The book’s launch through NCPA’s Page to Stage initiative—a sublime experience that takes the audience into a unique hybrid world of verse and prose, shadowed by mortality, an oneiric journey of exile, return—feels especially aligned with the spirit of Drukkavya. It’s not just a platform for poetry—it’s a space for transformation, for breaking form, and for letting literature live in new ways.

Ethos Literary Journal (ELJ): Congratulations, Joshiji! Please tell us about Drukkavya? How would you define this project for someone encountering it for the first time?

Hemant Joshi: Thank you! Drukkavya is an experience—emerging from words you can see, and visuals that speak—breaking the traditional way we read poetry and view imagery. It places you at an intersection where poetry and image have a dialogue with one another, and then moves further, transcending into a space of deeper meaning. When you encounter an image, you often begin breaking it down to form meaning—a meaning influenced by your preconceptions of the object you see. Similarly, when you read a poem, your imagination flows with the words, and the meaning slowly unfolds.

Drukkavya disrupts that sequence. It cannot be complete without the image and the words interacting with each other. In this book, you’ll notice that some poems begin with the image, while others end with one. This dialogue between the visual and the verbal is not just aesthetic—it is structural, philosophical. You will also see the frequent inclusion of ‘…’ (ellipses), symbolising a trailing thought—a gesture to the reader that neither words nor images alone are enough to enter this space of imagination and reimagination.

ELJ: The book seems to traverse artistic terrains, touching on surrealism, minimalism, and post-modern contemporary art. Could you speak about the aesthetic and philosophical influences behind the visual language of the book?

HJ: If you look at the back cover of Drukkavya, you’ll come across a quote—written in both Marathi and English: Every image is a poem, and every poem is an image. Even though the book is deeply rooted in Marathi, this line, for me, encapsulates its core philosophy. It was inspired by Guillaume Apollinaire’s Calligrammes, a collection of visual poetry published shortly before his death in 1918. Apollinaire was among the first to coin the term “surrealism,” initiating a movement later expanded by André Breton in his Surrealist Manifesto (1924). That lineage—from Chagall to de Chirico, Dalí, and Picasso—deeply influenced how artists blurred the lines between dream and reality, logic and madness, objectivity and subjectivity. In Drukkavya, I’ve attempted something similar: to disrupt logical sequences and create images that combine objects and meanings which often don’t coexist. A watermelon takes the form of a “makeover,” a kettle transforms into clouds of smoke. These juxtapositions are not merely playful—they serve as subtle critiques of perception, of language, and of visual experience. Minimalism, in my practice, is not just a visual strategy—it is a silence. I strip language down to its most essential form, allowing the image to emerge with quiet force. I have stripped down language to its core and taken you to the elevation of imagery, which will compel you to travel the imagery with words. In discovering this emergence, the minimalism is purposefully obtained—through words and line working together to drive the force of the image. This is an experiment, and only the readers will be able to reveal the full impact of that experience.

From a post-modern perspective, Drukkavya refuses fixed structure. The visual poems don’t conform to a singular form or tradition. They exist in a fluid zone, where neither word nor image dominates. That refusal to assign hierarchy is what places the work within a contemporary, even global, aesthetic—while being unmistakably regional in language and spirit.

More than imitating these styles, my work filters them through a distinctly Indian lens, borrowing from a global lineage. Ultimately, I wanted the book to create a third space—between poetry and painting, between thinking and seeing. A space where meaning is not delivered but slowly revealed in visual rhythm and poetic residue.

ELJ: The opening page of the book is unconventional—it features a drawing of Rabindranath Tagore. What prompted you to begin the book this way, and what meaning does that gesture hold for you?

HJ: Yes, the book opens with a portrait of Rabindranath Tagore, and that was a very deliberate decision. It wasn’t just a homage to the literary icon but a reflection of the spirit of discovery that I feel connects us. Tagore began painting quite late in his life. The story goes that while writing, he would often scribble out words, and in those scribbles, he began to notice emerging forms and images. What started as redactions became visual expressions. That organic transition—from text to image, from the written to the visual—deeply resonates with the ethos of Drukkavya. It speaks to the unintended birth of art, the emergence of form from failure, and how meaning can evolve when we stop trying to control it. In many ways, that’s also how I arrived at Drukkavya—by noticing how the visual and verbal began to collide in my own creative process. The first page of the book, then, needed to carry that weight of transition, of cohesion. It sets the tone—not only for what follows in the book, but for how the reader is invited to engage: not as a passive observer of poems, but as a participant in this journey.

ELJ: Line and line drawings are central to your work, especially in your previous poetry collection Shabdhraang. How does Drukkavya build on or depart from that earlier visual ethos?

HJ: Yes, line drawings have been central to my practice for over 15 years now. What has always fascinated me about the line is its purity—how, without relying on shape, colour, texture, or any traditional elements of painting, a single line can carry concept, energy, and form. In my earlier poetry collection Shabdhraang, the line appeared more intuitively, almost like a gesture that emerged alongside the poem to build the meaning. But in Drukkavya, the line has matured—it has become more intentional and philosophical. This emerges more in the second section of Drukkavya, which reflects my lifelong engagement with line drawings, where minimalism is not just a style but the essence of thought. The image is broken down to its simplest form—I even say, “the line bends, curves”—that’s the core philosophy of this section. I am not simplifying the words to match the visuals, but I am simplifying the form—inviting the reader to encounter the layers slowly, silently, and go beyond visual interpretation, holding the line’s hand. So, while Shabdhraang was the early stage of this concept, Drukkavya takes this experience further, strengthening the culmination of word and image. But the image is just a line, curved to form visuals.

ELJ: You’ve had a long career in advertising. What drew you from that world into poetry and visual art, and what does Drukkavya represent in that transition?

HJ: During my years in advertising, especially while working on concept development and campaign ideation, I often found myself turning to visual thinking. I was drawn to mundane, everyday objects and reimagining them in ways that made them feel fresh, meaningful, or emotionally charged within the commercial context. When working on campaigns in English, I’d often rely on the brilliance of copywriters to take the visuals forward. But when it came to Marathi, there was a shift. With the comfort of the language, the visual, and the headline or copy came to me almost as an impulse. I would often scribble these down before they became commercial ads and realised that the visuals wanted to break free from the constraints of commercial goals—to carry their own identity and poetic resonance. This brought me to the concept of “Image to Imagery”, which became the foundation of my first solo painting exhibition at the Artists’ Centre, Kala Ghoda. These paintings then went on to be shown in various solo and group shows across India. While the poetic verses took a backseat and my paintings took the centrestage, my concepts never belonged to just one medium. My shift—from writing a poem about a phoenix to painting that phoenix rising from ashes, and then breaking its form into a comb—came quite naturally. This transfusion between forms always had a hold on me. I could travel between media easily. I was never just a painter—I was a visual artist from the very start. And once the confines of advertising were lifted, I began to experience the liberty of the form, of the verse—and just as importantly, the absence of both, which allowed me to create a different kind of experience. I’m not saying I’m creating something unconventional—but I am saying I’m creating the unconventional from the conventional, opening a space between art and language. Drukkavya is the result of that deeper exploration, where I found that words and images could have a dialogue between themselves, not to explain each other, but to elevate the visual and poetic experience. This shift, from creating for brands to creating from within, felt like reclaiming a voice I had long been scribbling in the margins of commercial drafts. It wasn’t a rejection of advertising, but a natural evolution into something open-ended, uncertain, and deeply expressive.

ELJ: Finally, where do you see Drukkavya situated within Marathi literature today? And what would you want the readers to take from this?

HJ: Drukkavya, I believe, occupies a rare and emerging space within Marathi literature—a space that hasn’t yet been fully articulated. Marathi literature has a long, vibrant tradition of experimentation and historic depth. Drukkavya draws some of its spirit from this legacy, but it pushes further into interdisciplinary terrain. I believe Drukkavya carves out a space for itself within this long-standing and layered tradition. What I’m attempting here is not just “poems in shapes” or images that illustrate poetic meaning. I’m not placing a poem into a painting, nor painting as a companion to a poem. Instead, I see visual poetry as an extension of the poem itself—and of the visual form as its own poetic language. What I hope readers take away is not just a new way to perceive objects, ideas, and philosophical themes—but a deeper engagement with two poetic languages simultaneously: words and images. At the launch of Drukkavya at NCPA on 12th July, we are taking this further by giving poetry tangibility—through installations and a short poetry film. These additions are not decorative—they are continuations of the visual-poetic conversation. My thought behind this is simple: poetry will evolve, just as technology and perception have evolved. I don’t just want to reflect that—I want to pre-empt it, and present it to readers now, while it’s still unfamiliar.

I hope readers are surprised—even a little unsettled—by how the intersection of image and word asks them to reimagine poetry itself. And I hope they notice how the Marathi language, through visual abstraction, can participate in global literary and artistic conversations. This form allows for multiple readings—and I hope it invites readers to slow down, to reflect not only on meaning but on absence, suggestion, and ambiguity. Ultimately, if Drukkavya inspires even one poet or artist to explore this intermingling of word and image in a regional language, I would consider that the beginning of something meaningful—a small ripple in a much larger creative continuum.