About the session
Over the moon
Imtiaz Dharker will read from her new Glasgow poems as well as Over the Moon. These are poems about music and feet, church bells, beds, café tables, bad language and sudden silence. In contrast with her previous work written amidst the hubbub of India, these new poems are mostly set in Britain, where she has built a new life with – and since the death of – her husband Simon Powell.
'This is a passionate, uplifting collection of poems about language, love and loss, grief and joy, elegy and celebration. The loss of a great love makes poems of piercing beauty. In her finest book to date, Imtiaz Dharker finds resolution in language itself, and in a world the more loved for the sharpness of loss.' Gillian Clarke
'Imtiaz Dharker's new collection is the crown to a celebratory, humane, wholly utterable, subtly crafted poetry. Reading her, one feels that were there to be a World Laureate, Imtiaz Dharker would be the only candidate.' Carol Ann Duffy
About the speaker
Imtiaz Dharker is a poet, artist and documentary film-maker. Awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014, recipient of the Cholmondley Award and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, her collections include Purdah (Oxford University Press), Postcards from god, I speak for the devil and The terrorist at my table (all published by Penguin India and Bloodaxe Books UK), Leaving Fingerprints and Over the Moon (Bloodaxe Books UK). Her poems are on the British GCSE and A-Level English syllabus, and she reads with other poets at Poetry Live! events all over the country to more than 25,000 students a year. She has been Poet in Residence at Cambridge University Library, for Thresholds, and has recently completed a series of poems based on the Archives of St Paul's Cathedral. She has had ten solo exhibitions of drawings in India, London, New York and Hong Kong. She scripts and directs films, many of them for nongovernment organisations in India, working in the area of shelter, education and health for women and children.