Imtiaz Dharker

Imtiaz Dharker (born 31 January 1954) is a Pakistani-British poet, artist and documentary film-maker, born in Lahore and brought up in Glasgow. She won the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014, was appointed Chancellor of Newcastle University in 2020, and was appointed OBE in the 2025 New Year Honours. Her collections include Purdah and Other Poems (1989), Postcards from God (1997), I Speak for the Devil (2001), Over the Moon (2014) and Shadow Reader (2024). ¹

Dharker was born in Lahore, Punjab, on 31 January 1954; the English article's lead and Wikidata give 1954, though the article's infobox currently renders 1955. ^{1 2} Her family moved to Glasgow when she was less than one year old, and she grew up there. ¹ She eloped to India as a young woman to marry Anil Dharker, lived much of her adult life in India, and later married Simon Powell, the founder of Poetry Live, who died in 2009. ³ She now divides her time between London, Wales and Mumbai. ¹ Asked about her famous self-description as a "Scottish Muslim Calvinist", she has said she "wasn't really talking about faith" and was refusing easy labels. ³

Her first collection, Purdah and Other Poems (1989), examined the world of her Glasgow upbringing, and Postcards from God (1997) and I Speak for the Devil (2001) followed. ¹ The Terrorist at My Table (2006), Leaving Fingerprints (2009) and Over the Moon (2014), which was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award, extended her range, and Luck is the Hook (2018) and Shadow Reader (2024) are her most recent collections. ¹ She received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014 and a Cholmondeley Award, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and in 2019 declined to be considered for the post of Poet Laureate. ¹ Her poems are studied on the GCSE syllabus in England, she illustrates her own collections with pen-and-ink drawings, and she makes documentary films for non-governmental organisations on health, shelter and education. ³ She took office as Chancellor of Newcastle University on 1 January 2020. ¹

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