Imtiaz Dharker is a poet, artist and video film-maker and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2020 she became the Chancellor of Newcastle University. 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), Leaving Fingerprints, Over the Moon, Luck is the Hook and her latest, Shadow Reader (May 2024, Bloodaxe).
Imtiaz Dharker’s 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 36,000 students a year. She has been Poet in Residence at Cambridge University Library, worked on a series of poems based on the Archives of St Paul’s Cathedral as well as projects across art forms in Leeds, Newcastle and Hull. Her poems have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4 as well as the BBC World Service. She has had solo exhibitions of drawings in India, London, New York and Hong Kong. She scripts and directs films, many of them for non-government organisations in India, working in the area of shelter, education and health for women and children.
Refreshments included