Reetika Vazirani


Reetika Gina Vazirani was an Indian/American immigrant poet and educator.

Life

Vazirani was born in Patiala, India, in 1962 and went to the United States with her family in 1968. After graduating from Wellesley College in 1984, she received a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to travel to India, Thailand, Japan, and China. She also received an M.F.A. from the University of Virginia as a Hoyns Fellow.
Vazirani lived in Trenton, New Jersey, with her son Jehan, near the poet Yusef Komunyakaa, who was her partner and Jehan's father. There she taught creative writing as a visiting faculty member at The College of New Jersey. At the time of her death, Vazirani was Writer-in-Residence at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, with the intent of joining the English department at Emory University.
Yusef Komunyakaa had a relationship with poet Reetika Vazirani who was Indian origin, and they had a son Jehan of their live in relationship. On 16 July 2003, Vazirani was housesitting in the Chevy Chase, Maryland, home of novelist Howard Norman and his wife, the poet, Jane Shore. There, Vazirani killed her two-year-old son, Jehan, by slashing his wrist, and then committed suicide.

Works

Vazirani was the author of two poetry collections, White Elephants, winner of the 1995 Barnard New Women Poets Prize, and World Hotel, winner of the 2003 Anisfield-Wolf book award. She was a contributing and advisory editor for Shenandoah, a book review editor for Callaloo, and a senior poetry editor for Catamaran, a journal of South Asian literature. She translated poetry from Urdu and had some of her poems translated into Italian.
Her poem "Mouth-Organs and Drums" was published in the anthology Poets Against the War.
Vazirani's final collection of poetry, Radha Says, edited by Leslie McGrath and Ravi Shankar, was published in 2009 by Drunken Boat Media.

Awards

She was a recipient of a Discovery/The Nation Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Poets & Writers Exchange Program Award, fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers conferences, the Glenna Luschei/Prairie Schooner Award for her essay, "The Art of Breathing," included in the anthology How We Live our Yoga. She also had a poem in The Best American Poetry 2000.