“To write is to seek out in the tumult of the burnt bone of the arm that matches the bone of the leg.”
Alezandra Pizarnik
“I like Karan's poems. They have a mix of imagination and substance that's very appealing to me...“the sky must hate us/ as it sees everything we do.” I'd like to have written that...I’m especially drawn to the combination of directness and privacy in his poems, and the creation of a world within a world."
“These poems are, no bullshit, the real deal. You are the real deal, Karan. You are a real poet."
“This devastating poem explores gendered responses to grief, and vividly evokes the aftermath of a process of cremation in India, seen here from the inside, as it were, from a speaker both embedded in his culture and in some ways estranged from it.”
Mark Doty, for Red Wheelbarrow Prize 2021
(3rd Prize): “Euphemisms”
AWARDS
A braid of unknowing I tie before you
Honorable Mention, James Hearst Poetry Prize
in North American Review (Judge: Paul Guest)
My childhood and its scent of a bird caressed
Finalist, Literary Taxidermy Award
The Table in Plume Poetry (forthcoming)
Finalist, Julia Darling Memorial Prize
Double Sestina for Dead Grandfather and Dying Grandmother
Finalist, Orison Anthology Award in Poetry
FORTHCOMING
Dida in Colorado Review
a condensed history of my father's addiction in AGNI (Spring 2023)
Portrait of a Father as an Alcoholic in Rattle (2023)
I am is a sentence, you are is not in Poetry Online
Tug of war between whisper and rumor in Frontier Poetry
Ganga, Back Home in Prism Review
Sore Throat in Nimrod
Aubade, Heritage, sleep: fragments in The Ocotillo Review
We didn't bury him we burnt him / there's nothing left of him / he is the earth and the rivers in Little Engines
PUBLISHED POEMS
Homeless, Denial, Joyful & Repression
in The Indian Quarterly
Press in Stride
Labyrinth of Sickness: 3 Poems
for Grandmother in G5A Imprint
Aggrieved in The New Verse News
a wreath of haiku in The New Verse News
All the Things She's Lost in One Sentence Poems
Note: A few poems have been published under his pseudonym 'Maya'.