“To write is to seek out in the tumult of the burnt bone of the arm that matches the bone of the leg.”
—Alejandra 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
There is no time here, Editor's Choice Honorable Mention for Bellevue Literary Review Poetry Award
shortlisted for Red Wheelbarrow Prize
My childhood and its scent of a bird caressed
Finalist, Literary Taxidermy Award
The Table in Plume Poetry
Finalist, Julia Darling Memorial Prize, Kallisto Gaia Press
Swaha
Finalist, Frontier global Poetry Award
Finalist, Orison Anthology Award in Poetry
FORTHCOMING
Dida in Colorado Review (Fall 2023)
a condensed history of my father's addiction in AGNI (Spring 2023)
Portrait of a Father as an Alcoholic in Rattle (2023)
Time is a Motherfucker in Strange Horizons
Ganga and Back Home in Prism Review
A Perfect House is Where No-one Lives in Joyland Magazine (short story)
राम नाम सत्य है in Nifty Lit
Nameless and the way waiting becomes an injury
in Arts & Letters
Rings of Saturn in Banshee Lit
This plague of ritual, Unscrewing the bolts of hope, and Kaali guides me too shavasana in Menagerie Magazine
Right behind you, Lizard, and Remains of the house in The Offing Mag (Manav Kaul translations)
PUBLISHED POEMS
Homeless, Denial, Joyful & Repression
in The Indian Quarterly
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'.