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I Speak for the Devil | Bloodaxe Books
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Imtiaz Dharker

I Speak for the Devil

Imtiaz Dharker

ILLUSTRATED BY IMTIAZ DHARKER

Publication Date : 26 Jul 2001

ISBN: 9781852245696

Pages: 65
Size :216 x 138mm
Rights: World

Winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, 2014

Imtiaz Dharker grew up a Muslim Calvinist in a Lahori household in Glasgow, was adopted by India and married into Wales. Her main themes are drawn from a life of transitions: childhood, exile, journeying, home, displacement, religious strife and terror, and latterly, grief. She is also an accomplished artist, and all her collections are illustrated with her drawings, which form an integral part of her books.

In I Speak for the Devil, the woman’s body is a territory, a thing that is possessed, owned by herself or by another. Her sequence They’ll say, 'She must be from another country' traces a journey, starting with a striptease where the claims of nationality, religion and gender are cast off, to allow an exploration of new territories, the spaces between countries, cultures and religions.

The title-sequence speaks for the devil in acknowledging that in many societies women are respected, or listened to, only when they are carrying someone else inside their bodies – a child; a devil. For some, to be "possessed" is to be set free.

'Hers is a strong, concerned, economical poetry, in which political activity, homesickness, urban violence, religious anomalies, are raised in an unobtrusive domestic setting, all the more effectively for their coolness of treatment' – Alan Ross, London Magazine.

'Beautiful ambivalence…realistic details take on a surrealistic menace in another context…These poems deal very powerfully with social, religious, racial and above all sexual entrapment’ – Christopher Levenson, Toronto South Asian Review.

‘Here is no glib internationalism or modish multiculturalism …Displacement here no longer spells exile; it means an exhilarating sense of life at the interstices. There is an exultant celebration of a self that strips off layers of superfluous identity with grace and abandon, only to discover that it has not diminished, but grown larger, generous, more inclusive’ – Arundhathi Subramaniam, Poetry International

'Were there to be a World Laureate, Imtiaz Dharker would be the only candidate' – Carol Ann Duffy.

 

Imtiaz Dharker reads five poems

Imtiaz Dharker reads five poems: 'Blessing' from Postcards from god, 'Honour killing' and 'They'll say, "She must be from another country"' from I Speak for the Devil, and 'The terrorist at my table' and 'How to cut a pomegranate' from The terrorist at my table. This film is from the DVD-book In Person: 30 Poets (2008), filmed by Pamela Robertson-Pearce, edited by Neil Astley, which includes five poems read by Imtiaz Dharker selected from her first three Bloodaxe titles.  


 

  

BOOKS BY Imtiaz Dharker

Leaving Fingerprints

Imtiaz Dharker

Leaving Fingerprints

Publication Date : 24 Sep 2009

Read More   amazon.co.uk
Luck Is the Hook

Imtiaz Dharker

Luck Is the Hook

Publication Date : 29 Mar 2018

Read More   amazon.co.uk
Over the Moon

Imtiaz Dharker

Over the Moon

Publication Date : 25 Sep 2014

Read More   amazon.co.uk
Postcards from god

Imtiaz Dharker

Postcards from god

Purdah • Postcards from god

Publication Date : 29 May 1997

Read More   amazon.co.uk

RELATED BOOKS

The terrorist at my table
Shadow Reader

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Imtiaz Dharker presents a half-hour Radio 4 feature on sighing, 19 & 21 December 2016

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Poet and artist Imtiaz Dharker, winner of the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry 2014, was the castaway on Desert Island Discs on 12 July 2015.

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