The Terrorist at My Table - Softcover

Imtiaz Dharker

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1852247355 ISBN 13: 9781852247355

Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd, 2006

Synopsis

Winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, 2014

An anguished god surveys a world stricken by fundamentalism in these powerful poems by a writer whose cultural experience spans three countries: Pakistan, the country of her birth, and Britain and India, her countries of adoption. 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.

The terrorist at my table asks crucial questions about how we live now – working, travelling, eating, listening to the news, preparing for attack. What do any of us know about the person who shares this street, this house, this table, this body? When life is in the hands of a fellow-traveller, a neighbour, a lover, son or daughter, how does the world shift and reform itself around our doubt, our belief?

Imtiaz Dharker’s poems and pictures hurtle through a world that changes even as we pass. This is life seen through distorting screens – a windscreen, a TV screen, newsprint, mirror, water, breath, heat haze, smokescreen.

Her book grows, layer by layer, through three sequences: The terrorist at my table, The habit of departure and Worldwide Rickshaw Ride. Each cuts a different slice through the terrain of what we think of as normal. But through all the uncertainties and concealments, her poems unveil the delicate skin of love, trust and sudden recognition.

Imtiaz Dharker is an accomplished artist. Like all her collections, The terrorist at my table is illustrated with her drawings, which form an integral part of the book.

About this title

About the Author

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 video filmmaker, and has seven poetry 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), Luck Is the Hook (2018), and Shadow Reader (2024), a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. 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 HM Queen Elizabeth in 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 35,000 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 2020 she was appointed Chancellor of Newcastle University. She lives in London.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1852247355
• ISBN 13: 9781852247355
• Binding: Paperback
• Illustrator: Imtiaz Dharker
• Number of pages: 160