Imtiaz Dharker

Imtiaz Dharker
Dharker at the British Library 12 April 2011
Born	1954 (age 62–63) Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
Nationality	British
Occupation	poet, artist

Imtiaz Dharker (born 1954) is a Pakistan-born British poet, artist and documentary filmmaker. She has won the Queen’s Gold Medal for her English poetry.

Dharker was born in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan to Pakistani parents. She was brought up in Glasgow where her family moved when she was less than a year old. She was married to Simon Powell, the founder of the organization Poetry Live, who died in October 2009 after surviving for eleven years with cancer. Dharker divides her time between London, Wales, and Mumbai. She says she describes herself as a "Scottish Muslim Calvinist" adopted by India and married into Wales. Her daughter Ayesha Dharker, (whose father is Anil Dharker), is an actress in international films, television and stage.

Dharker has written 6 books of poetry Purdah (1989), Postcards from God (1997), I speak for the Devil (2001), The Terrorist at my Table (2006), Leaving Fingerprints (2009) and Over the Moon (2014) (all self-illustrated).

Dharker is a prescribed poet on the British AQA GCSE English syllabus. Her poems Blessing and This Room were included in the AQA Anthology, Different Cultures, Cluster 1 and 2 respectively. Her poem Tissue also appears in the 2017 AQA poetry anthology for GCSE English Literature. Dharker was a member of the judging panel for the 2008 Manchester Poetry Prize, with Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke. For many she is seen as one of Britain's most inspirational contemporary poets. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2011. In the same year, she was awarded the Cholmondeley Prize by the Society of Authors. In 2011 she judged the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award with the poet Glyn Maxwell. In 2012 she was nominated a Parnassus Poet at the Festival of the World, hosted by the Southbank Centre as part of the Cultural Olympiad 2012, the largest poetry festival ever staged in the UK, bringing together poets from all the competing Olympic nations. She was the poet in residence at the Cambridge University Library in January–March 2013. In July 2015 she appeared on the popular BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs and spoke about growing up in Glasgow and her decision to leave her family and elope to India, as well as her second marriage to the late Simon Powell.