Imtiaz Dharker

Imtiaz Dharker
File:Imtiaz Dharker at the British Library 12 April 2011.jpg Dharker at the British Library 12 April 2011
Born	1954 (age 69–70) Lahore, Pakistan
Nationality	British
Occupation	poet, artist

Imtiaz Dharker (born 1954) is a Pakistan-born British poet, artist and documentary filmmaker. She has won the Queen’s Gold Medal for her English poetry.

Early life

Dharker was born in Lahore to Pakistani parents. She was brought up in Glasgow where her family moved when she was less than a year old. She was married to Simon Powell, the founder of the organization Poetry Live, who died in October 2009 after surviving for eleven years with cancer. Dharker divides her time between London, Wales, and Mumbai. She says she describes herself as a "Scottish Muslim Calvinist" adopted by India and married into Wales. Her daughter Ayesha Dharker, (whose father is Anil Dharker), is an actress in international films, television and stage.

Literary career

Dharker has written five books of poetry Purdah (1989), Postcards from God (1997), I speak for the Devil (2001), The Terrorist at my Table (2006), Leaving Fingerprints (2009) and Over the Moon (2014) (all self-illustrated).

Dharker is a prescribed poet on the British AQA GCSE English syllabus. Her poems Blessing and This Room are included in the AQA Anthology, Different Cultures, Cluster 1 and 2 respectively. Dharker was a member of the judging panel for the 2008 Manchester Poetry Prize, with Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke. For many she is seen as one of Britain's most inspirational contemporary poets. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2011. In the same year, she was awarded the Cholmondeley Prize by the Society of Authors. In 2011 she judged the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award with the poet Glyn Maxwell. In 2012 she was nominated a Parnassus Poet at the Festival of the World, hosted by the Southbank Centre as part of the Cultural Olympiad 2012, the largest poetry festival ever staged in the UK, bringing together poets from all the competing Olympic nations. She was the poet in residence at the Cambridge University Library in January–March 2013. In July 2015 she appeared on the popular BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs and spoke about growing up in Glasgow and her decision to leave her family and elope to India, as well as her second marriage to the late Simon Powell.

Themes

The main themes of Dharker's poetry include home, freedom, journeys, geographical and cultural displacement, communal conflict and gender politics. All her books are published by the poetry publishing house Bloodaxe Books. Purdah And Other Poems deal with the various aspects of a Muslim woman's life where she experiences injustice, oppression and violence engineered through the culture of purdah.

Film and illustration

Dharker is also a documentary filmmaker and has written and directed over a hundred films and audio-visuals, centring on education, reproductive health and shelter for women and children. In 1980 she was awarded a Silver Lotus for a short film. An accomplished artist, she has had ten solo exhibitions of pen-and-ink drawings in India, Hong Kong, the USA, the UK and France.

Publications

• Purdah (Oxford University Press, India, 1989)
• Postcards from god (including Purdah) (Bloodaxe Books, 1997, ISBN 1-85224-407-0)
• I Speak for the Devil (Bloodaxe Books, 2001, ISBN 978-1852245696; Penguin Books India, 2003)
• The Terrorist at my Table (Bloodaxe Books, 2006, ISBN 1-85224-735-5; Penguin Books India 2007)
• Leaving Fingerprints (Bloodaxe Books, 2009. ISBN 1-85224-849-1)
• Over the Moon (Bloodaxe Books, 2014. ISBN 978-1780371207)

External links

• British Council's Contemporary Writers in the UK bio and review of Dharker's works
• Official website
• Profile and poetry (written and audio) at the Poetry Archive
• Imtiaz Dharker reading her poetry. 13 April 2010. British Library sound archive.