Imtiaz Dharker was born in Lahore, Pakistan,in 1954. When she was less than a year old she moved with her family to Glasgow. She went to university there and then moved to Bombay where she has since been based – although she does spend many months a year in London. It is from this transitory life that she draws many of her themes: childhood, exile, journeying, home and religious conflict. In he poetry collection “Purdah” (published in 1989) she is a traveller between cultures. In “Postcards from God” she imagines a deity surveying a world stricken by fundamentalism. Her more recent collections are “I speak for the devil” (2001), “The terrorist at my table” (2006), and “Leaving Fingerprints” (2009).

As well as being a poet she is an artist, all the drawings in the collections being reproductions of her work. Imtiaz Dharker imagines her books as sequences of both poems and drawings. She is furthermore a documentary film maker in India, producing, with her team, about ten films a year. A multiply-talented woman.

Imtiaz Dharker has said that “The image of purdah for me was on the dangerous edge of being almost seductive: the hidden body, the highlighted eyes, the suggestion of forbidden places. But of course it is also being used to bring women to heel in the name of religion. God has been hijacked to justify all kinds of acts of violence.”

“ … There is a moment when the neighbours’ children become the sinister enemy, and the name of god takes on a dangerous sound …I don’t want to have to define myself in terms of location or religion”