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    Imtiaz Dharker

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    Sourav Kumar
    Imtiaz Dharker is a renowned poet born in Pakistan who later migrated with her family to Scotland as a child. She has lived in multiple places such as India, London, and Wales. Dharker's work often explores themes of cultural identity, feminism, and the immigrant experience through the lens of her mixed heritage. She has published seven poetry collections that highlight social, religious, and gender issues. Dharker's poems provide insight into what it means to feel like an outsider across multiple dimensions of identity.

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    Imtiaz Dharker

    Uploaded by

    Sourav Kumar
    247 views20 pages
    Imtiaz Dharker is a renowned poet born in Pakistan who later migrated with her family to Scotland as a child. She has lived in multiple places such as India, London, and Wales. Dharker's work often explores themes of cultural identity, feminism, and the immigrant experience through the lens of her mixed heritage. She has published seven poetry collections that highlight social, religious, and gender issues. Dharker's poems provide insight into what it means to feel like an outsider across multiple dimensions of identity.

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    Imtiaz Dharker is a renowned poet born in Pakistan who later migrated with her family to Scotland as a child. She has lived in multiple places such as India, London, and Wales. Dharker's work often explores themes of cultural identity, feminism, and the immigrant experience through the lens of her mixed heritage. She has published seven poetry collections that highlight social, religious, and gender issues. Dharker's poems provide insight into what it means to feel like an outsider across multiple dimensions of identity.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    247 views20 pages

    Imtiaz Dharker

    Uploaded by

    Sourav Kumar
    Imtiaz Dharker is a renowned poet born in Pakistan who later migrated with her family to Scotland as a child. She has lived in multiple places such as India, London, and Wales. Dharker's work often explores themes of cultural identity, feminism, and the immigrant experience through the lens of her mixed heritage. She has published seven poetry collections that highlight social, religious, and gender issues. Dharker's poems provide insight into what it means to feel like an outsider across multiple dimensions of identity.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
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    Imtiaz Dharker is a renowned poet, artist and filmmaker who was born in Pakistan but spent most of her life in Scotland and other places. She writes about themes of identity, displacement and being an outsider across cultures.

    Imtiaz Dharker divides her time between London, Wales and Mumbai.

    Imtiaz Dharker is a poet, visual artist and documentary filmmaker. She has published seven poetry collections and occupies an important place as one of Britain's most inspirational contemporary poets.

    IMTIAZ

    DHARKER
    Born in Lahore, Pakistan in 1954
    Family migrated to Scotland when Imtiaz was only a
    year old
    Got married to Indian Anil Dharkar and shifted to
    India
    Gave birth to daughter Ayesha Dharkar
    Divorced Anil Dharkar and moved back to Scotland
    Married Simon Powell, the founder of the
    organization Poetry Live
    Dharker divides her time between London, Wales and Mumbai
    She describes herself as Scottish, Muslim, Calvinist
    Dharker is a poet, an accomplished visual artist and
    documentary film maker
    Occupies an important place as one of Britain’s most
    inspirational contemporary poets
    She was considered for the position of Poet Laureate but
    withdrew herself from contention, in order as she stated, to
    maintain focus on her writing
    The mixed heritage is at the heart of her writing
    She is a truly global poet whose work speaks plainly and with great
    emotional intelligence to anyone who has ever felt adrift in the
    increasingly complex, multicultural and shrinking world we inhabit
    Whatever her experiences are as a Muslim is presented in her poems
    Her poems highlight the social, religious, racial and sexual
    entrapment
    Her work is consciously feminist, consciously political, consciously
    that of a multiple outsider
    But she is someone who knows her own mind, rather than someone
    full of doubt and confusion
    as she noted in a recent interview:

    "In a world that seems to be splitting itself into narrower national and
    religious groups, sects, castes, subcastes, we can go on excluding others
    until we come down to a minority of one." 
    Dharker is the author of 7 poetry collections:
    Purdah and other poems (1988)
    Postcards from god (1997)
    I speak for the devil (2001)
    The terrorist at my table (2006)
    Leaving Fingerprints (2009)
    Over the Moon (2014)
    Luck is the Hook (2018)
    HONOUR KILLING (2001) - Imtiaz Dharkar

    (In Lahore, in the last year of the twentieth


    century, 
    A woman was shot by her family in her lawyer’s
    office. 
    Her crime was that she had asked for a divorce. 
    The whole Pakistan Senate refused to condemn
    the act. 
    They called it an honour killing.)
    At last I'm taking off this coat, 
    this black coat of a country
    that I swore for years was mine, 
    that I wore more out of habit
    than design. 
    Born wearing it, 
    I believed I had no choice.
    I'm taking off this veil, 
    this black veil of a faith
    that made me faithless
    to myself, 
    that tied my mouth, 
    gave my god a devil's face, 
    and muffled my own voice.
    I'm taking off these silks, 
    these lacy things
    that feed dictator dreams, 
    the mangalsutra and the rings 
    rattling in a tin cup of needs
    that beggared me.

    I'm taking off this skin, 


    and then the face, the flesh, 
    the womb.
    Let's see
    what I am in here
    when I squeeze past
    the easy cage of bone.

    Let's see
    what I am out here, 
    making, crafting, 
    plotting
    at my new geography.
     
    THEY’LL SAY: ‘SHE MUST BE FROM ANOTHER COUNTRY’ (2003) -

    When I can’t comprehend


    why they’re burning books
    or slashing paintings,
    when they can’t bear to look
    at god’s own nakedness,
    when they ban the film
    and gut the seats to stop the play
    and I ask why
    they just smile and say,
    ‘She must be
    from another country.’
    When I speak on the phone
    and the vowel sounds are off
    when the consonants are hard
    and they should be soft,
    they’ll catch on at once
    they’ll pin it down
    they’ll explain it right away
    to their own satisfaction,
    they’ll cluck their tongues
    and say,
    ‘She must be
    from another country.’
    When my mouth goes up
    instead of down,
    when I wear a tablecloth
    to go to town,
    when they suspect I’m black
    or hear I’m gay
    they won’t be surprised,
    they’ll purse their lips
    and say,
    ‘She must be
    from another country.’
    When I eat up the olives
    and spit out the pits
    when I yawn at the opera
    in the tragic bits
    when I pee in the vineyard
    as if it were Bombay,
    flaunting my bare ass
    covering my face
    laughing through my hands
    they’ll turn away,
    shake their heads quite sadly,
    ‘She doesn’t know any better,’
    they’ll say,
    ‘She must be
    from another country.’
    Maybe there is a country
    where all of us live,
    all of us freaks
    who aren’t able to give
    our loyalty to fat old fools,
    the crooks and thugs
    who wear the uniform
    that gives them the right
    to wave a flag,
    puff out their chests,
    put their feet on our necks,
    and break their own rules.
    But from where we are
    it doesn’t look like a country,    
    it’s more like the cracks
    that grow between borders
    behind their backs.
    That’s where I live.
    And I’ll be happy to say,
    ‘I never learned your customs.
    I don’t remember your language
    or know your ways.
    I must be
    from another country.’
     
     

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