Poet and artist Imtiaz Dharker was born in Lahore, Pakistan, and raised in Glasgow, Scotland, where her family moved while she was still an infant. She splits her time between London, Wales, and Mumbai.
Dharker’s work draws upon her multicultural roots and upbringing to express broad themes of exploration, finding home, and questioning the world. Of her eight poetry collections, her first Purdah, was published in 1989, and her most recent, Shadow Reader, in 2024. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2011 and is a recipient of the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and the Cholmondeley Award. Her poems have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4, and she was the inaugural Poet of the Fair for the London Book Fair. Her drawings have seen 11 solo exhibitions on three continents.
Dharker was considered for British Poet Laureate in 2019 but chose to withdraw, feeling that the duties of the role would take too much time away from her writing. She took the position of Chancellor of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 2020, a position she still holds. As a part of Poetry Live!, Imtiaz Dharker travels across Britain alongside other poets, reading her own work live to many thousands of students.
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Photo by Ayesha Dharker.