Yogesh Patel, honoured with an MBE for literature by the late Queen and awarded the Freedom of the City of London, is a poet, publisher, and critic. His work has appeared in The London Magazine, PN Review, World Literature Today, AGNI, and Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi), among others. A recipient of many awards—including the International Pinnacle Accolade Award by Vatayan – Poetry on South Bank, and the Co-Op Prize for poetry on the environment—his poetry is also archived aboard the Moon-bound Polaris and Blue Ghost missions by SpaceX and Firefly Aerospace. A founder of Skylark Publications UK and the Word Masala project, he has performed at the Royal Society of Literature, the National Poetry Library, the House of Lords, NYU, the BBC, and international festivals. He was Poet-of-Honor at NYU in 2019. His latest collection, The Rapids (The London Magazine Editions), received an award, and his poetry film was a winner of The Poetry Archive WorldView Now! 2025. His children’s picture book has been shortlisted for the Faber & Faber FAB Prize 2025. For more details, visit his website: www.patelyogesh.co.uk.
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Two and a Half
$16About the Book
Yogesh Patel's poems in "2½" are “sparks of fire”, igniting language into flames of inspiration in a world that fails us, but only if we permit it. Patel magnifies the
humanitarian failures in our world society with poetry of vision that is at once daring and profoundly humane. These are tales of hopes…and lost dreams, rising out of the simmering ash of society's arrested conscience, into the healing blaze of universal truths. One cannot fail to be inspired by the power of compassion in these poems.
– James Ragan, author of ‘The Hunger Wall’ and ‘The Chanter’s Reed’ and
recipient of a Poetry Society of America citation and Swan Foundation Humanitarian
Award==============
These poems are filled with recurring potent images of place and personal histories which successfully invite the reader into intimate spaces. Those spaces include everything from socks to shaving brush but also bravely address disturbing and distressing subject matter. The violence at the heart of this collection is never expressed directly but infuses the poetry, so that the reader is left shaken and thoughtful.
– Maura Dooley, Judge’s comment, Aryamati Prize 2023