Imtiaz Dharker (born 31 January 1954) is a Pakistani-born British poet, artist, and video film maker. She won the Queen's Gold Medal for her English poetry and was appointed

Chancellor Chancellor () is a title of various official positions in the governments of many countries. The original chancellors were the of Roman courts of justice—ushers, who sat at the (lattice work screens) of a basilica (court hall), which separa ...

Newcastle University Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is a red brick university and a mem ...

from January 2020. In 2019, she was considered for the position of Poet Laureate following the tenure of Dame

Carol Ann Duffy Dame Carol Ann Duffy (born 23 December 1955) is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is a professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Poet Laureate in May 2009, and her term expired in 2019. She wa ...

, but withdrew herself from contention in order, as she stated, to maintain focus on her writing. “I had to weigh the privacy I need to write poems against the demands of a public role. The poems won," said Dharker. For many Dharker is seen as one of Britain's most inspirational contemporary poets. She was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820 by King George IV to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the RSL has about 800 Fellows, elect ...

in 2011. In the same year, she received the

Cholmondeley Award The Cholmondeley Awards ( ) are annual awards for poetry given by the Society of Authors in the United Kingdom. Awards honour distinguished poets, from a fund endowed by the Dowager Marchioness of Cholmondeley in 1966. Since 1991 the award has bee ...

from the

Society of Authors The Society of Authors (SoA) is a United Kingdom trade union for professional writers, illustrators and literary translators, founded in 1884 to protect the rights and further the interests of authors. Membership of the society is open to "anyon ...

. In 2016, she received an Honorary Doctorate from SOAS University of London. With Poetry Live, she reads to over 25,000 students a year, travelling across the country with poets including Duffy,

Simon Armitage Simon Robert Armitage (born 26 May 1963) is an English poet, playwright, musician and novelist. He was appointed Poet Laureate on 10 May 2019. He is professor of poetry at the University of Leeds. He has published over 20 collections of poetr ...

John Agard John Agard FRSL (born 21 June 1949) is a Guyanese-born British playwright, poet and children's writer. In 2012, he was selected for the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.

Gillian Clarke Gillian Clarke (born 8 June 1937) is a Welsh poet and playwright, who also edits, broadcasts, lectures and translates from Welsh into English. She co-founded Tŷ Newydd, a writers' centre in North Wales. Life Gillian Clarke was born on 8 ...

Daljit Nagra Daljit Nagra (born 1966) is a British poet whose debut collection, ''Look We Have Coming to Dover!'' was published by Faber in 2007. Nagra's poems relate to the experience of Indians born in the UK (especially Indian Sikhs), and often employ l ...

Grace Nichols Grace Nichols (born 1950) is a Guyanese poet who moved to Britain in 1977, before which she worked as a teacher and journalist in Guyana. Her first collection, ''I is a Long-Memoried Woman'' (1983), won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. In Decemb ...

Owen Sheers Owen Sheers (born 20 September 1974) is a Welsh poet, author, playwright and television presenter. He was the first writer-in-residence to be appointed by any national rugby union team. Early life Owen Sheers was born in Suva, Fiji, and was ...

Jackie Kay Jacqueline Margaret Kay (born 9 November 1961) is a Scottish poet, playwright, and novelist, known for her works ''Other Lovers'' (1993), ''Trumpet'' (1998) and ''Red Dust Road'' (2011). Kay has won many awards, including the Somerset Maugham A ...

and

Maura Dooley Maura Dooley (born 18 May 1957) is a British poet and writer. She has published five collections of poetry and edited several anthologies. She is the winner of the Eric Gregory Award in 1987 and the Cholmondeley Award in 2016, and was shortli ...

. Dharker divides her time between

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

Wales Wales ( ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by the Irish Sea to the north and west, England to the England–Wales border, east, the Bristol Channel to the south, and the Celtic ...

, and

Mumbai Mumbai ( ; ), also known as Bombay ( ; its official name until 1995), is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the financial capital and the most populous city proper of India with an estimated population of 12 ...

. She says she describes herself as a "Scottish Muslim

Calvinist Reformed Christianity, also called Calvinism, is a major branch of Protestantism that began during the 16th-century Protestant Reformation. In the modern day, it is largely represented by the Continental Reformed Protestantism, Continenta ...

" adopted by India and married into Wales. Dharker is a prescribed poet on the British

AQA AQA Education, trading as AQA (formerly the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance), is an awarding body in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It compiles specifications and holds Test (assessment), examinations in various subjects at Genera ...

GCSE The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is an academic qualification in a range of subjects taken in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, having been introduced in September 1986 and its first exams taken in 1988. State schools ...

English syllabus. Her poems ''Blessing'', ''This Room'' and ''The right word'' were included in the AQA Anthology ''Different Cultures'', Cluster 1 and 2 respectively. Her poem ''Tissue'' appears in the 2017

poetry anthology for GCSE English Literature. Her poem ''A century Later'' appears in the ''World and Lives'' Anthology. Her poems ''Living Space'' and ''In Wales, wanting to be Italian'' also appear in the Eduqas WJEC poetry anthology for GCSE English Literature. Dharker was a member of the judging panel for the 2008

Manchester Poetry Prize The Manchester Poetry Prize is a literary award celebrating excellence in creative writing. It was launched by Carol Ann Duffy and The Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2008, and was the first phase of the annua ...

, with

and Dame

. In 2011, she judged the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award with the poet

Glyn Maxwell Glyn Maxwell (born 1962) is a British poet, playwright, novelist, librettist, and lecturer. Early life Of primarily Welsh heritage — his mother Buddug-Mair Powell (b. 1928) acted in the original stage show of Dylan Thomas's ''Under Milk Wood'' ...

. 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.

Family

Dharker was born in

Lahore Lahore ( ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Administrative units of Pakistan, Pakistani province of Punjab, Pakistan, Punjab. It is the List of cities in Pakistan by population, second-largest city in Pakistan, after Karachi, and ...

Punjab, Pakistan Punjab (, ) is a Administrative units of Pakistan, province of Pakistan. With a population of over 127 million, it is the Demographics of Pakistan, most populous province in Pakistan and the List of first-level administrative divisions by popu ...

. She grew up in

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

where her family moved when she was less than one year old. She was married to Simon Powell, the founder of the organisation Poetry Live, who died in October 2009 after an 11 year battle with cancer. Her daughter, Ayesha (whose father is Anil Dharker), is an actress in international films, television and stage.

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

Bloodaxe Books Bloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specializing in poetry. History Bloodaxe Books was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, who is still editor and managing director. Bloodaxe moved its editorial office to Northumbe ...

Film

Dharker is also a video film maker and has written and directed more than a hundred films and audio-visuals, centering on education, reproductive health and shelter for women and children. In 1980 she was awarded a Silver Lotus for a short film.

Art

An accomplished artist, she has had 11 solo exhibitions of pen-and-ink drawings in India, Hong Kong, USA, UK, and France. All her poetry collections contain her drawings. She was one of the poet/artists featured in the Poet Slash Artist exhibition curated by poet

Lemn Sissay Lemn Sissay FRSL (born 21 May 1967) is a British author and broadcaster. He was the official poet of the 2012 London Olympics, was chancellor of the University of Manchester from 2015 until 2022, and joined the Foundling Museum's board of trus ...

and the art guru

Hans Ulrich Obrist Hans Ulrich Obrist (born 1968) is a Swiss art curator, critic, and art historian. He is artistic director at the Serpentine Galleries, London. Obrist is the author of ''The Interview Project'', an extensive ongoing project of interviews. He is ...

for Manchester International Festival 2021, along with Tracy Emin,

Lubaina Himid Lubaina Himid (born 1954) is a British artist and curator. She is a professor of contemporary art at the University of Central Lancashire.Precious Okoyomon,

Inua Ellams Inua Marc Mohammed Onore de Ellams II (born 23 October 1984) is a Nigerian-born British poet, playwright and performer. He was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2023 Birthday Honours for services to the arts. E ...

, Jay Bernard,

Adonis In Greek mythology, Adonis (; ) was the mortal lover of the goddesses Aphrodite and Persephone. He was considered to be the ideal of male beauty in classical antiquity. The myth goes that Adonis was gored by a wild boar during a hunting trip ...

Etel Adnan Etel Adnan (; 24 February 1925 – 14 November 2021) was a Lebanese-American poet, essayist, and visual artist. In 2003, Adnan was named "arguably the most celebrated and accomplished Arab American author writing today" by the academic journal '' ...

, Anne Boyer,

Jimmie Durham Jimmie Bob Durham (July 10, 1940 – November 17, 2021) was an American sculptor, essayist and poet. He was active in the United States in the civil rights movements of African Americans and Native Americans in the 1960s and 1970s, serving on the ...

Ibrahim El-Salahi Ibrahim El-Salahi (, born 5 September 1930) is a Sudanese painter, former public servant and diplomat. He is one of the foremost visual artists of the Khartoum School, considered as part of African Modernism and the pan-Arabic Hurufiyya art mov ...

Renee Gladman Renee Gladman (born 1971) is a poet, novelist, essayist, and artist who describes herself as "preoccupied with crossings, thresholds, and geographies as they play out at the intersection of poetry, prose, drawing, and architecture." Her fourteen p ...

, Sky Hopinka,

Friederike Mayröcker Friederike Mayröcker (20 December 1924 – 4 June 2021) was an Austrian writer of poetry and prose, radio plays, children's books and dramatic texts. She experimented with language, and was regarded as an avant-garde poet, and as one of the l ...

Xu Bing Xu Bing (; born 1955) is a Chinese artist who served as vice-president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He is known for his printmaking skills and installation art, as well as his creative artistic use of language, words, and text and how ...

, and

Gozo Yoshimasu Gozo ( ), known in antiquity as Gaulos, is an island in the Maltese archipelago in the Mediterranean Sea. The island is part of the Republic of Malta. After the island of Malta itself, it is the second-largest island in the archipelago. As ...

. ''"In classical Chinese, Arabic and Persian poetry, calligraphy connects the verbal and visual in ways that make poetry and art practically the same thing. That way of seeing words is remade for today by Imtiaz Dharker in her captivating drawing My Breath. Stripes flow magically out of her body into space. The lines continue their journey through a second picture, then in the third become words, lines of poetry repeated, repeated, repeated through entire blocks of text. It is a perfect illustration of the subtle and mysterious relationship between writing and drawing, seeing and reading. Poet Slash Artist, curated by the poet Lemn Sissay and the art guru Hans Ulrich Obrist, probes the mystery of that borderland, and finds what can only be called spirituality. The soul, even... This exhibition is a manifesto for a new culture, where the hubbub and hype are silenced, and at last we can hear one another think."''

Publications

*''Purdah'' (

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, India, 1989) *''Postcards from God'' (including ''Purdah'') (

, 1997, ) *''I Speak for the Devil'' (Bloodaxe Books, 2001, ;

Penguin Books Penguin Books Limited is a Germany, German-owned English publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers the Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

, 2003) *''The Terrorist at my Table'' (Bloodaxe Books, 2006, ; Penguin Books India 2007) *''Leaving Fingerprints'' (Bloodaxe Books, 2009. ) *''Over the Moon'' (Bloodaxe Books, 2014. ) *''Luck is the Hook'' (Bloodaxe Books, 2018. ) *''Shadow Reader'' (Bloodaxe Books, 2024. )

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dharker, Imtiaz Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Pakistani emigrants to the United Kingdom Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom Writers from Glasgow British women poets Living people Pakistani documentary filmmakers English-language poets from Pakistan British expatriates in India British Muslims Artists from Glasgow Women documentary filmmakers People associated with Newcastle University 1954 births Scottish poets People from Lahore Officers of the Order of the British Empire