Hoshang Merchant

Hoshang Dinshaw Merchant (born 1947) is a poet from India. Most of his writings are in English.

Early Years

Hoshang Merchant was born in Bombay to Zoroastrian business family. Owing to the then family tradition, he was supposed to make money instead of doing other works. However, Merchant was neither interested in money nor in his father's property. From childhood, he studied literature, philosophy and history. He understood his homosexuality at an early age but it was not until the late 80s that he could socially identify as gay because of societal pressure.Fact|date=July 2007

Education

Merchant was educated at St. Xavier's College, Bombay; Occidental College, Los Angeles; and at Purdue University. He was, after the completion of his Ph.D., exposed to radical left front in the Middle East and acted violently.

Teacher and Poet

Currently, Merchant teaches poetry at the University of Hyderabad. He was the first person to edit India's first gay anthology "Yaraana: Gay Writing from India", first poet to declare himself gay in public sphere, first person to design a complete course on sexual dissendence at the University of Hyderabad.

Merchant is a poet, critic, university teacher of English and traveler. He traveled widely in Europe and the Middle East. While he read Buddhism with the Dalai Lama at Dharamsala, he read Islam in Iran and Palestine.

These days Merchant lectures on gay issues at several universities in India and waiting for his fifteen collections of poems to be acknowledged as "literature" and not just as "gay literature".

His Works

Poetry

* "Flower to Flame" (1989, Delhi: Rupa & Co.)
* "Stone to Fruit" (1989, Calcutta: Writers Workshop)
*"Yusuf in Memphis" (1991, Calcutta: Writers Workshop)
*"Hotel Golkonda: Poems 1991" (1992, Calcutta: Writers Workshop)
*"The Home, the Friend and the World" (1995, Calcutta: Writers Workshop)
*"Jonah and the Whale" (1995, Calcutta: Writers Workshop)
*"Love's Permission" (1996, Calcutta: Writers Workshop)
*"The Heart in Hiding" (1996, Calcutta: Writers Workshop)
*"The Birdless Cage" (1997, Calcutta: Writers Workshop)
*"Talking to the Djinns" (1997, Calcutta: Writers Workshop)
*"Selected Poems" (1999, Calcutta: Writers Workshop)
*"Bellagio Blues" (2004, Hyderabad: Otherwise Books, Spark-India)
*"Homage to Jibanananda Das" (2005, Contemporary World Poetry Series, London: Aark Arts)

Critical studies

*"In-discretions: Anais Nin" (1990, Calcutta: Writers Workshop)

Edited

*"Yaarana: Gay Writing from India" (1999, New Delhi: Penguin)