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Jeet Thayil is an Indian poet. Born in Kerala, he is best known as a writer, performance poet and musician. He is the author of four collections of poetry, including These Errors Are Correct (2008) and English (2004), and is editor of the Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets (2008). Educated in Hong Kong, New York and Mumbai, he is currently based in Mumbai. As a songwriter and guitarist, he has worked with Bombay Down (NYC) and is currently one half of the contemporary music project Sridhar/ Thayil (Mumbai).

Thayil has recently finished a work of fiction, Narcopolis. He was, he says, an alcoholic (like many of the Bombay poets) and an addict for almost two decades: "I spent most of that time sitting in bars, getting very drunk, talking about writers and writing. And never writing. It was a colossal waste. In two years I've done more than I did in 20 years. I feel very fortunate that I got a second chance." These days, he says, as we make our farewells, the only addictions he has are poetry and coffee. "Coffee's much easier to get than heroin."

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Jeet Thayil", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0