Imtiaz Dharker

1954–present

Imtiaz Dharker is a poet, artist and documentary filmmaker. Born in Lahore and raised in Glasgow after migrating there with her family as an infant, she eloped to India in her youth before marrying into a Welsh family. She describes herself as a ‘Scottish Muslim Calvinist’ and a ‘cultural mongrel’, terms that capture her experience of living between cultures, faiths and languages. At the core of her work is a constant questioning of what ‘home’, ‘freedom’ and ‘faith’ really mean in a divided world and an exploration of themes like identity, conflict, gender and religion.

Her poems are widely taught in UK schools and appear on the British GCSE and A-level English syllabuses. She reads to more than 35,000 students every year through Poetry Live!, the national education programme founded by her husband, Simon Powell. Her poems have appeared in public places, including London Underground stations, Glasgow billboards and on Mumbai buses. She has also served as a judge for literary prizes, including chairing the 2008 Manchester Poetry Prize and the 2011 Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award.

In 2012 she represented Pakistan at Poetry Parnassus, part of the London Olympics, which brought together poets from every competing country. Dharker’s poems were part of 100,000 poems released as bookmarks dropped from a helicopter onto the waiting crowd. Her poetry has won several major awards too, including the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. She has been a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and poet-in-residence at Cambridge University Library, and has created poems based on the archives of St Paul’s Cathedral. In 2019 she was offered the role of UK Poet Laureate but declined, choosing to continue working independently. She currently resides in London.

She is one of the few poets whose written collections are illustrated with her own pen-and-ink drawings. These artworks appear throughout her books and in gallery exhibitions worldwide, including in London, Leeds, New York, Hong Kong and India. Dharker has also made over 100 documentary films, mainly for NGOs in India, that cover issues such as women’s health, education and shelter, especially focusing on the lives of women and children in vulnerable situations.