Poet Navkirat Sodhi has authored five collections of poems, including a work in translation, but she strongly believes that poetry lives and thrives outside of pages. It fuels her momentum to observe people react to lines like ‘A tongue above the one I have, began to grow last night’ or ‘….and Time lay dead next to me’. She is scaling uncharted territories through poetry and performance art, rendering a refreshing, intriguing perspective to our connection with verse. She has been making striding leaps by taking poetry right to the eyes, ears and minds of a distinguished audience, each time leaving them spellbound with the pioneering, seamless expansion of the spirit of her verse.  

She takes poetry to the people, sometimes parallel to their level, sometimes showering them with her verse, harnessed twenty feet above the ground. She combusts poetry with video art, music and artfully scientific costume. Her most recent performance saw her take centre stage in a khadi cape as the author, poet and performer for Santati Mahatma Gandhi Then Now Next — a traveling exhibition and book commemorating 150 years of Mahatma Gandhi’s life. She tied over hundred years of art and Gandhi’s philosophy with experiential verse that was performed at the NGMA, Mumbai and the IGNCA, Delhi, among others. 

Clad in hundreds of mirrors, projecting visuals as she moved, to reflect the very theme of the collection she was launching — Pixelated, released at Soho House in Mumbai. An experiential book where Navkirat has collaborated with  ace photographers — L.A.R (Laura Gavrilenko and Rid Burman) and Tarun Vishwa. The book is laid out to reflect the state of us through poems and pictures. It questions the notion of holding a picture, a thought, an emotion in a time of extreme visual influx that marks our lives today. 

Navkirat also collaborated with fashion designer Gaurav Gupta who is revered for innovative design and fantastical presentation, to open the Lakmé Fashion Week at the Royal Opera House in Mumbai. Navkirat recited her poems live throughout the show, suspended twenty feet high, with her dress transforming into the set through which models meandered. She recited in extempore mode over music that was mixed live. 

As digital fashion weeks became the norm during the pandemic, Navkirat wrote and performed for two couture, avant garde films  — Name is Love for designer Gaurav Gupta and Feral Feather for designer Bibhu Mohapatra that debuted at the New York Fashion Week. She is currently working on upcoming poetry-and-performance-centric pieces and a first-of-its-kind poetry album. She is also writing her first long work in poetic fiction.