Born in Pakistan, Imtiaz Dharker grew up a Muslim Calvinist in a Lahori household in Glasgow and eloped with a Hindu Indian to live in Bombay. She is now making a new life between India, London and Wales. She is an accomplished artist and documentary film-maker, and all her books, Postcards from god (including Purdah) (Bloodaxe, 1997), I Speak for the Devil (Bloodaxe, 2001) and The terrorist at my table (Bloodaxe, 2006), include her own drawings.

Joan Bakewell chose this poem by Imtiaz Dharker as one of her Selected Works (August 2006).

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Related links

› Imtiaz Dharker at India Poetry International Web

› Imtiaz Dharker at Bloodaxe Books

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Featured poem

Women Bathing

All our lives, in every city,
out of every landscape
the waters of the Alhambra
have been murmuring to us.
From fountains, from watercourses,
from the secret pools in courtyards,
voices calling across centuries.

The other women are bathing
in the moonlight.

‘Come,’ they say, ‘Come out of the day’s heat,
out of shaded rooms, let’s escape and slip away,
let the veils fall, one by one.
Slide into the pools that lie like mirrors of the sky,
and let the moon wash over our bodies.’

Bodies lush, generously-hipped.
Bodies like pomegranates,
bursting with promises.

Imtiaz Dharker, from The Terrorist At My Table (Bloodaxe, 2006), reproduced by permission of Bloodaxe