I Speak for the Devil - Softcover

Dharker, Imtiaz

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143030892 ISBN 13: 9780143030898

Publisher: Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 2003

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Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2014

Imtiaz Dharker's cultural experience spans three countries. Born in Pakistan, she grew up in Glasgow, and now divides her time between Bombay and London. It is from this life of transitions that she draws her themes: childhood, exile, journeying, home and religious strife.

In I Speak for the Devil, the woman's body is a territory, a thing that is possessed, owned by herself or by another. Her sequence, They'll say, 'She must be from another country' traces a journey, starting with a striptease where the claims of nationality, religion and gender are cast off, to allow an exploration of new territories, the spaces between countries, cultures and religions.

The title-sequence speaks for the devil in acknowledging that in many societies women are respected, or listened to, only when they are carrying someone else inside their bodies - a child; a devil. For some, to be "possessed" is to be set free.

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Review

Hers is a strong, concerned, economical poetry, in which political activity, homesickness, urban violence, religious anomalies, are raised in an unobtrusive domestic setting, all the more effectively for their coolness of treatment. --Alan Ross, London Magazine.

Beautiful ambivalence... realistic details take on a surrealistic menace in another context...These poems deal very powerfully with social, religious, racial and above all sexual entrapment. --Christopher Levenson, Toronto South Asian Review.

Here is no glib internationalism or modish multiculturalism... Displacement here no longer spells exile; it means an exhilarating sense of life at the interstices. There is an exultant celebration of a self that strips off layers of superfluous identity with grace and abandon, only to discover that it has not diminished, but grown larger, generous, more inclusive. --Arundhathi Subramaniam, Poetry International.

Beautiful ambivalence... realistic details take on a surrealistic menace in another context...These poems deal very powerfully with social, religious, racial and above all sexual entrapment. --Christopher Levenson, Toronto South Asian Review.

Here is no glib internationalism or modish multiculturalism... Displacement here no longer spells exile; it means an exhilarating sense of life at the interstices. There is an exultant celebration of a self that strips off layers of superfluous identity with grace and abandon, only to discover that it has not diminished, but grown larger, generous, more inclusive. --Arundhathi Subramaniam, Poetry International.

About the Author

Born in Pakistan, 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 five books with Bloodaxe, Postcards from god (including Purdah) (1997), I Speak for the Devil (2001), The terrorist at my table (2006), Leaving Fingerprints (2009) and Over the Moon (2014), all including her own drawings. She won the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2014 for her collection Over the Moon and for a lifetime's contribution to poetry. Over the Moon was also shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry 2014.

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