Shadow Reader
Published on 23. May 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
160 pages
978-1-78037-709-4 (ISBN)
Description
Shadow Reader is a radiant criss-cross of encounters, messages and earthy Punjabi proverbs, shot through with the dark thread of an unwelcome prophecy. The poems bind this looming curse to the colonisation of countries, the earth and its creatures, those who own the story and those who redirect it through art or artifice. 'Does the warp look back at the one who is weaving and say, This is not how I remember it...?'
Imtiaz Dharker's new collection pays attention to wilful erasures, exclusions and also to places of sanctuary. This is poetry as music, as momentum, as the texture and taste of languages, joyously sensuous and rich in images. While it acknowledges the everyday and its shadows, it is also an irreverent, playful celebration of life.
Imtiaz Dharker grew up a Muslim Calvinist in a Lahori household in Glasgow, was adopted by India and married into Wales. She was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2014 for her fifth collection Over the Moon and for her services to poetry. 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.
Imtiaz Dharker's new collection pays attention to wilful erasures, exclusions and also to places of sanctuary. This is poetry as music, as momentum, as the texture and taste of languages, joyously sensuous and rich in images. While it acknowledges the everyday and its shadows, it is also an irreverent, playful celebration of life.
Imtiaz Dharker grew up a Muslim Calvinist in a Lahori household in Glasgow, was adopted by India and married into Wales. She was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2014 for her fifth collection Over the Moon and for her services to poetry. 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.
Reviews / Votes
Imtiaz Dharker's poetry shines a light in the dark. She is interested in how things work, in art, in history, in politics... You cannot hear her perform without being somehow transformed by the experience. Witty, wise, profound and moving, her work crosses continents. -- Jackie Kay * The Guardian * This is a passionate, uplifting collection of poems about language, love and loss, grief and joy, elegy and celebration. The loss of a great love makes poems of piercing beauty. In her finest book to date, Imtiaz Dharker finds resolution in language itself, and in a world the more loved for the sharpness of loss. -- Gillian Clarke * on Over the Moon * Imtiaz Dharker's new collection is the crown to a celebratory, humane, wholly utterable, subtly crafted poetry. Its dark jewels are the magnificent poems of bereavement, which will surely endure. Reading her, one feels that were there to be a World Laureate, Imtiaz Dharker would be the only candidate. -- Carol Ann Duffy * on Over the Moon *More details
Edition
Paperback original
Language
English
Place of publication
Tyne and Wear
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Illustrations
50 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 9 mm
Weight
211 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78037-709-4 (9781780377094)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
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 documentary 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). 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 25,000 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 2019 she was appointed Chancellor of Newcastle University.
Content
11 In the Year of My Death
13 Out of the rose garden
14 Story
15 (But the roses are savages)
17 The map of this country is made of scars
19 Face to face
21 Witness
23 The Show
24 They brought glass beads
26 Boy with a Turban
27 Letters home
29 Did anyone say what happened to the girl?
31 Loom
33 The weaver makes a pitch
35 (This is not a prayer mat)
36 Shadow Reader
37 The weaver tells the spell
41 Demons Rule
43 What goes of your father?
44 Fly
47 I am Not Alone
49 The Shadow Reader Is Measuring
50 Saying No
51 Pink
52 Chori
54 Where you belong
55 What it grows into
56 Back
57 Redeem
59 (When you hear the wind)
60 The welcome
62 The key
63 Reader
64 The piece
66 For the Minicab Driver Who Looked as if He Needed Feeding
67 For the Woman Who Will Bring Biryani Next Time
68 For the Girl on the Elizabeth Line
69 For the Woman Who Changed Back to a Snake
70 Cross
71 So How Does This Work? I ask
73 (A door full of light)
74 Swiping Left on Larkin
76 Let's Meet in the Place Called Jazz
77 In Which I Am Ghosted by William Blake
79 I Find Faiz Blowing on His Saucer of Tea
81 Away
83 There are no words
84 Next
85 For the girl whose hair escaped
87 What it is like
88 What you can buy with a bangle
89 Naa Ja
90 However
93 It was the fault of the clothes
94 (Only you can tell)
95 They arrive
96 Fold
98 They leave
99 As they go
100 (Take one step forward)
103 They are walking
105 Night Walk with Ghosts, Smith?eld
106 Night Walk with Dancing Bones
107 Night Walk by the Canal
108 Night Walk with Lit Windows
110 Night Walk with Fox
111 Night Walk with Blackbird
113 Night Walk with Voices
115 Cranes lean in
116 Seen from a drone, Delhi
118 Seen from a drone, Mumbai
120 Seen from a drone
121 On mute
122 One says this, another says that
123 X
124 (Life chases your feet)
125 Sweeping
127 Writing the Will
129 She Is Trying On the Pre-loved Shoes
130 What Bunny-Auntie Says to Bobby-Uncle
131 She Has an Off-day
132 Bobby Saves Nature to the Cloud
133 Auntie Death Says She Slays
134 Bubbles Experiences a Moment of Dread
135 She Contemplates Her Death
136 Donor
137 Night Visitors
138 The Host
141 The Guest
143 With empty hands
144 You write a window
145 Go to the child
147 (This is the embrace)
148 You are
150 We are holding
151 But the radiance
153 (We turn our faces up)
154 Your Session Has Been Terminated
155 Everywhere the angels
156 I Walk in the Shadow
158 Acknowledgements
13 Out of the rose garden
14 Story
15 (But the roses are savages)
17 The map of this country is made of scars
19 Face to face
21 Witness
23 The Show
24 They brought glass beads
26 Boy with a Turban
27 Letters home
29 Did anyone say what happened to the girl?
31 Loom
33 The weaver makes a pitch
35 (This is not a prayer mat)
36 Shadow Reader
37 The weaver tells the spell
41 Demons Rule
43 What goes of your father?
44 Fly
47 I am Not Alone
49 The Shadow Reader Is Measuring
50 Saying No
51 Pink
52 Chori
54 Where you belong
55 What it grows into
56 Back
57 Redeem
59 (When you hear the wind)
60 The welcome
62 The key
63 Reader
64 The piece
66 For the Minicab Driver Who Looked as if He Needed Feeding
67 For the Woman Who Will Bring Biryani Next Time
68 For the Girl on the Elizabeth Line
69 For the Woman Who Changed Back to a Snake
70 Cross
71 So How Does This Work? I ask
73 (A door full of light)
74 Swiping Left on Larkin
76 Let's Meet in the Place Called Jazz
77 In Which I Am Ghosted by William Blake
79 I Find Faiz Blowing on His Saucer of Tea
81 Away
83 There are no words
84 Next
85 For the girl whose hair escaped
87 What it is like
88 What you can buy with a bangle
89 Naa Ja
90 However
93 It was the fault of the clothes
94 (Only you can tell)
95 They arrive
96 Fold
98 They leave
99 As they go
100 (Take one step forward)
103 They are walking
105 Night Walk with Ghosts, Smith?eld
106 Night Walk with Dancing Bones
107 Night Walk by the Canal
108 Night Walk with Lit Windows
110 Night Walk with Fox
111 Night Walk with Blackbird
113 Night Walk with Voices
115 Cranes lean in
116 Seen from a drone, Delhi
118 Seen from a drone, Mumbai
120 Seen from a drone
121 On mute
122 One says this, another says that
123 X
124 (Life chases your feet)
125 Sweeping
127 Writing the Will
129 She Is Trying On the Pre-loved Shoes
130 What Bunny-Auntie Says to Bobby-Uncle
131 She Has an Off-day
132 Bobby Saves Nature to the Cloud
133 Auntie Death Says She Slays
134 Bubbles Experiences a Moment of Dread
135 She Contemplates Her Death
136 Donor
137 Night Visitors
138 The Host
141 The Guest
143 With empty hands
144 You write a window
145 Go to the child
147 (This is the embrace)
148 You are
150 We are holding
151 But the radiance
153 (We turn our faces up)
154 Your Session Has Been Terminated
155 Everywhere the angels
156 I Walk in the Shadow
158 Acknowledgements