Bloodaxe Books | Imtiaz Dharker at Newcastle Poetry Festival 2023 @BloodaxeBooks | Uploaded August 2023 | Updated October 2024, 4 hours ago.
Imtiaz Dharker grew up a Muslim Calvinist in a Lahori household in Glasgow, was adopted by India and married into Wales. She was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2014 for her fifth collection Over the Moon and for her services to poetry. Her main themes are drawn from a life of transitions: childhood, exile, journeying, home, displacement, religious strife and terror, and latterly, grief. She is also an accomplished artist, and all her collections are illustrated with her drawings, which form an integral part of her books.
In this reading at the 2023 Newcastle Poetry Festival, Imtiaz reads the poem 'Chaudhri Sher Mobarik Looks at the Loch' from her 2018 collection LUCK IS THE HOOK (bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/luck-is-the-hook-1173), followed by 'Undone' from OVER THE MOON (bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/over-the-moon-151) and then ‘The Trick’, also from Luck is the Hook. The rest of the reading features several new poems which will be included in SHADOW READER, forthcoming from Bloodaxe in May 2024. (bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/shadow-reader-1348).
Shadow Reader is a radiant criss-cross of encounters, messages and earthy Punjabi proverbs, shot through with the dark thread of an unwelcome prophecy. Imtiaz Dharker’s new collection pays attention to wilful erasures, exclusions and also to places of sanctuary. This is poetry as music, as momentum, as the texture and taste of languages, joyously sensuous and rich in images. While it acknowledges the everyday and its shadows, it is also an irreverent, playful celebration of life.
Imtiaz Dharker grew up a Muslim Calvinist in a Lahori household in Glasgow, was adopted by India and married into Wales. She was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2014 for her fifth collection Over the Moon and for her services to poetry. Her main themes are drawn from a life of transitions: childhood, exile, journeying, home, displacement, religious strife and terror, and latterly, grief. She is also an accomplished artist, and all her collections are illustrated with her drawings, which form an integral part of her books.
In this reading at the 2023 Newcastle Poetry Festival, Imtiaz reads the poem 'Chaudhri Sher Mobarik Looks at the Loch' from her 2018 collection LUCK IS THE HOOK (bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/luck-is-the-hook-1173), followed by 'Undone' from OVER THE MOON (bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/over-the-moon-151) and then ‘The Trick’, also from Luck is the Hook. The rest of the reading features several new poems which will be included in SHADOW READER, forthcoming from Bloodaxe in May 2024. (bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/shadow-reader-1348).
Shadow Reader is a radiant criss-cross of encounters, messages and earthy Punjabi proverbs, shot through with the dark thread of an unwelcome prophecy. Imtiaz Dharker’s new collection pays attention to wilful erasures, exclusions and also to places of sanctuary. This is poetry as music, as momentum, as the texture and taste of languages, joyously sensuous and rich in images. While it acknowledges the everyday and its shadows, it is also an irreverent, playful celebration of life.
