Nothing But The Poem - Imtiaz Dharker

The SPL's resident podcast host Sam Tongue takes a deep dive into two poems by one of Britain's most beloved poets, Imtiaz Dharker. Imtiaz Dharker - a Pakistani-born poet who grew up in Glasgow, then moved to Bombay as an adult before returning to Britain - was awarded the Queens' Medal for Poetry in 2014. Themes in Dharker's poetry include questioning what is meant by home, personal freedom, geographical and cultural displacement, communal conflict and gender politics. Carol Ann Duffy said, "Whether Imtiaz Dharker writes of exile, childhood, politics or grief, her clear-eyed attention brings each subject dazzlingly into focus. She makes it look easy, this clarity and economy, but it is her deft phrasing, wit and grace that create this immediacy.” The two poems savoured, discussed, examined in some depth in this podcast, are from her 2018 collection Luck is the Hook and can be read here: Bairn Stitch