#imtiaz dharker

[aqvilegias]

her name, my devotion

anora (2024) / pablo neruda - ode to an apple / sylvia plath - maenad / alexei pal - still life with pomegranate / imtiaz dharker - how to cut a pomegranate / oleg khoroshilov - pomegranate / edward hirsch - the enigma: rilke / c.c. white's pomegranate / george henry hall - a pomegranate, siena / lana del rey - did you know that there's a tunnel under ocean blvd / song of solomon 4:3 / mary cisper - pomegranate / vladislav loktev - pomegranate photography / patricia langley - why a pomegranate? / rubik kocharian - quartered pomegranate

[fatchance]

"When you open the book, it opens you."

Fragment from the poem "The Welcome" by Imtiaz Dharker, in the collection Shadow Reader, 2024.

[wordsthatkeepmyfeetdry]

How to Cut a Pomegranate by Imtiaz Dharker

[poem-today]

A poem by Imtiaz Dharker

Swiping left on Larkin

Here he is younger, his shoulders thinner. She flicks a finger, swipes left. He is dismissed without a flicker.

If they pass on the street, she sees a boy trudge by with a book and satchel under the arm, on the way to a lifetime of drudge, easy to overlook.

In the edge of his eye she is a blur between staying or dying, a whiff of abroad, the chaos of prams and infants teething.

At the end of every birth is grieving. He takes the dark for a walk, his light on a leash through the sputtering streets of a town caught in the act of drowning.

From a window a curtain is waving but his back is turned. Shops shut up and shutters come down on the chatter of living, the guttering years.

All roads lead to a leaving. He goes in to the bar of the station hotel, sits for a while. When he leaves, he leaves a pale ring on the table. Gold

spills out of basements over his feet. He walks down a street and out of his name. Beyond rumour and fame, a flurry of letters blown into gutters,

the glitter of language on cobbles, his words remain bright as believing or half-believing, At the end of the world there is always

the sea and its breathing, swiping right, swiping right across a blue screen to something beginning.

Imtiaz Dharker

Watch and listen to Imtiaz Dharker read her poem (15:00)

More poems by Imtiaz Dharker are available through her website.

[essaysandopinions]

Just finished shadow reader by imtiaz dharker and one of my favourites is a very little poem but a lovely one

Reader

You come to the books

to take you away, but they

open to welcome you home

and you stay.

[kagamine-rin-everyday]

day 609! i liked a poem so much in english lit i started physically shaking😭

pic from queenmeiko on pinterest

[origami-butterfly]

*I left out my four least favourites because there's 16 on the anthology, but those four were: Tissue (Imtiaz Dharker), The Charge of the Light Brigade (Alfred Tennyson), Poppies (Jane Weir), and War Photographer (Carol Ann Duffy) P&C students, I'm sorry if one of those is your favourites, but I picked my favourites based on first impressions, whereas with L&R I have personal experience with all of them.

Love and Relationships version of this poll

[clarasbeans]

tissue - imtiaz dharker

[the-angry-acrobat]

a circus of stars, your dreams a trapeze, faces lifted like mirrored moons

— imtiaz dharker

[plangentia]

living space / one breath, imtiaz dharker (from postcards from god, 1997)

[ssjandtechno]

How to Cut a Pomegranate - Imtiaz Dharker (2006)

Never,' said my father, 'Never cut a pomegranate through the heart. It will weep blood. Treat it delicately, with respect.

Just slit the upper skin across four quarters. This is a magic fruit, so when you split it open, be prepared for the jewels of the world to tumble out, more precious than garnets, more lustrous than rubies, lit as if from inside. Each jewel contains a living seed. Separate one crystal. Hold it up to catch the light. Inside is a whole universe. No common jewel can give you this.’

Afterwards, I tried to make necklaces of pomegranate seeds. The juice spurted out, bright crimson, and stained my fingers, then my mouth.

I didn't mind. The juice tasted of gardens I had never seen, voluptuous with myrtle, lemon, jasmine, and alive with parrots’ wings.

The pomegranate reminded me that somewhere I had another home.

Pomegranates are the most dramatic fruit ever.

Bitch you are a piece of fruit why does it look like I murdered you. Why do you leave my fingertips red and stained. Why do you run down my hands to my elbows when I tear you apart. Why must I rip your body into bloodied chunks to get what's inside of you. Why do you sound so lovely when I crack you open. Why must I eat you with a knife and my bare hands. Why is there so much of you and why is there never enough.

[cppsheffield]

Centre for Poetry and Poetics in Collaboration with Black Humanities Series Presents:

A Reading With Safia Khan, Inua Ellams and Imtiaz Dharker

Venue: The Diamond, LT2, The University of Sheffield, 6pm.

Safia Khan is a junior doctor and poet. Her debut collection (Too Much Mirch) was published in 2022 with Smith | Doorstop and won the New Poets Prize. She has been commissioned to write and deliver lectures in poetry for various universities and literary organisations, including The British Library, The University of Oxford, The Poetry Business, and the Hippocrates Initiative for Poetry and Medicine. Her work has been published in various journals and anthologies including The North, BATH MAGG, Poetry Wales, Introduction X: The Poetry Business Book of New Poets (New Poets List), We’re All in It Together: Poems for a disUnited Kingdom (Grist), Dear Life (Hive), Surfing the Twilight (Hive). -- Born in Nigeria, Inua Ellams is a poet, playwright & performer, graphic artist & designer. He is a Complete Works poet alumni and facilitates workshops in creative writing where he explores reoccurring themes in his work - Identity, Displacement and Destiny - in accessible, enjoyable ways for participants of all ages and backgrounds.

His awards include: Edinburgh Fringe First Award 2009, The Liberty Human Rights Award, The Live Canon International Poetry Prize, The Kent & Sussex Poetry Competition, Magma Poetry Competition, Winchester Poetry Prize, A Black British Theatre Award and The Hay Festival Medal for Poetry. He has been commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, National Theatre, Tate Modern, Louis Vuitton, BBC Radio & Television. His poetry books include ‘Candy Coated Unicorn and Converse All Stars’ published Flipped Eye, 'The Wire-Headed Heathen' by Akashic Books, The Half God of Rainfall by 4th Estate and The Actual by Penned in The Margins. His plays include ‘Black T-shirt Collection’, ‘The 14th Tale’, ‘Barber Shop Chronicles’ and ‘Three Sisters’ published by Oberon. He founded The Midnight Run (an arts-filled, night-time, urban walking experience.) The Rhythm and Poetry Party (The R.A.P Party) which celebrates poetry & hip hop, and Poetry + Film / Hack (P+F/H) which celebrates Poetry & Film. -- Imtiaz Dharker grew up a 'Muslim Calvinist' in a Lahori household in Glasgow, was adopted by India and married into Wales. She is an accomplished artist and video film-maker, and has published six books with Bloodaxe, Postcards from god (including Purdah) (1997), I Speak for the Devil (2001), The terrorist at my table (2006), Leaving Fingerprints (2009), Over the Moon (2014) and Luck Is the Hook (2018). Her seventh, Shadow Reader, is published in 2024. All her poetry collections are illustrated with her drawings, which form an integral part of the books; she is one of very few poet-artists to work in this way. She was awarded The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry for 2014, presented to her by The Queen in spring 2015, and has also received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Over the Moon was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry 2014. Her 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 35,000 students a year. She has had a dozen solo exhibitions of drawings in India, London, Leeds, 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. In 2015 she appeared on the iconic BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs. In 2020 she was appointed Chancellor of Newcastle University. She lives in London.

Please note this is an in-person event and we would love you to be there but if you can't make it to Sheffield you can log in by no later then 5.50 on the following link: meet.google.com/fdh-igyk-hrr

Recording now available:

[waiting-eyez]

Some day your head won’t find my lap so easily. Trust is a habit you’ll soon break.

(Imtiaz Dharker)

[derangedrhythms]

Imtiaz Dharker, Autumn: An Anthology for the Changing Seasons; 'Murmuration', ed. Melissa Harrison.

TEXT ID: You are speaking in a flight of starlings, in words that have the sheen of metal, a flash of green or purple, an iridescence on your tongue. Starling words, once spoken, fly up in swarms through a calm sky, through the long light of evening, and can never be unspoken or forgotten.

[papenathys]

Hi! 💚 I love your blog (and your thoughts on secret history just now!) I was wondering if you have any thoughts on the rise of like “Instagramable poetry” its something I’ve noticed from the Donna tartt/dark academia girlies - the kind where it’s usually words that read pretty together but no surrounding context (I.e, bruised knuckles and dollar store wine), but I’ve not really seen any literature students talk about it besides a few people calling it Rupi Kaur imitation, and I’m so interested in how people view it compared to the stuff they study? I hope you have a wonderful day 💚

Hate it. Don't care about it. Poetry shouldn't be created for the sole purpose of circulating isolated lines as aesthetic quotes for Tumblr and Pinterest.

Here's a poem by Imtiaz Dharker written after the Babri Masjid riots of 1992 instead.

[jem-in-eyee]

Saw @mitskey ‘s analysis of shahid ali’s poem, so had to pull out Imtiaz Dharker to read a poem and not analyse it personally because i can’t, but understand it through internet, oh boi, it’s hitting me now that I’m not a literature student anymore :(

A pressing theme in Dharker’s poems is ‘identity’. The compulsion and dynamic nature of the same, its connection to revolt, division of humanity, etc. It is interesting to see her inability to settle down or find a middle ground over religion. Reminds me of a 1947 partition witness I interviewed, who talked of the rise of religious radicalism during the Indian independence movements.

A random rotten flower pulled out of festivities at my place today / ‘tissue’ by Imtiaz Dharker

27 May 2023.