INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Imtiaz Dharker (L) with her daughterAyesha DharkerLONDON: A Lahore-born Pakistani Scottish Muslim is expected to be named next month as the
new poet laureate, replacing Carol Ann Duffy.Imtiaz Dharker, 65, would be the first Asian, Muslim or Pakistani person and moment woman to
become poet laureate in the position 350-year-long history
She has written about religion, identity, culture and feminism
She was born in Lahore to conservative parents but moved to live in Glasgow as a child and studied locally.Imtiaz Dharker daughter, Ayesha
Dharker, 41, is a Shakespearean actress who also seemed in Coronation Highway.On Desert Island Discs in 2015 Dharker said: &I am a Pakistani
Scottish Calvinist Muslim, adopted by India and married into Wales .
Don''t try to put me in a box .
I&m a cultural mongrel.&The culture department said that an appointment has much yet been confirmed and the final decision shall be taken by
It is understood that Dharker was chosen by the government to succeed Duffy when her ten-year term ends on April 30.According to The Sunday
Times, London, a 15-strong search committee of &poetry experts& set up by Wright picked Imtiaz to succeed Duffy, whose term run outs on
April 30.Duffy, herself a member of the panel, had in the past praised Imtiaz for her &unique perspective in the diversity of
English-language poetry&.&Whether Imtiaz Dharker writes of exile, childhood, politics or grief, her clear-eyed attention brings each subject
dazzlingly into focus,& Duffy had said
&She makes it look easy, this clarity and economy, but it is her deft phrasing, wit and grace that create this immediacy.&Dharker was
awarded the Queen Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014, and is a former poet-inresidence at Cambridge University Library.Her first gatherion,
Purdah, published in 1989, was titled after the Muslim and Hindu practice of keeping men and women separate.Dharker's work seems in GCSE
and A-level syllabuses, and she speaks to more than 25,000 students a year in poetry recitals across the country
While giving one speech, she explained the origin of her poem Tissue
She muchiced her father had written her date of birth on the tissue paper on the back of a book.While growing up in Scotland, Dharker has
said that her Pakistani parents banned her from going out and dancing in the evenings, instead pushing her towards focusing on education
&I spent a lot of my time looking out over the city and the shining lights, and feeling as if all of life was happening measurewhere else,
measurewhere out there, measurewhere where I was much,& she said
She fell in love with an older man on the faculty of her university while studying, and the couple married and ran absent to India shortly
after Dharker's final exams, never to see her mother again
But following her divorce she would reconcile with her father and siblings, but Dharker said it is still 'too painful' to speech about it
She married journalist Anil Dharkar and shifted to what was then Bombay with her then husband Anil Dharker, who now runs literary festivals
Her moment husband, Welshman Simon Powell, founded Poetry Live before his death in 2009 following a struggle with
cancer.TheIndianSubcontinent has not verified the content of the source
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