Over the Moon - Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry - Softcover

Imtiaz Dharker

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1780371209 ISBN 13: 9781780371207

Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd, 2014

Synopsis

Winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2014
Shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry 2014

Imtiaz Dharker was born in Pakistan, grew up a Muslim Calvinist in a Lahori household in Glasgow, was adopted by India and married into Wales. 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.

Over the Moon is her fifth book from Bloodaxe. These are poems of joy and sadness, of mourning and celebration: poems about music and feet, church bells, beds, cafe tables, bad language and sudden silence. In contrast with her previous work written amidst the hubbub of India, these new poems are mostly set in London, where she has built a new life with - and since the death of - her husband Simon Powell.

About this title

Review:

'an incredibly poignant, heart-breaking account of grief, loss, renewal and moving on; the illustrations work with the poems in really surprising and beautiful ways.' --Helen Mort, on Over the Moon, speaking on Radio 4's World at One

'Imtiaz Dharker's new collection is the crown to a celebratory, humane, wholly utterable, subtly crafted poetry. Its dark jewels are the magnificent poems of bereavement, which will surely endure. Reading her, one feels that were there to be a World Laureate, Imtiaz Dharker would be the only candidate.' - Carol Ann Duffy

'This is a passionate, uplifting collection of poems about language, love and loss, grief and joy, elegy and celebration. The loss of a great love makes poems of piercing beauty. In her finest book to date, Imtiaz Dharker finds resolution in language itself, and in a world the more loved for the sharpness of loss.' --Gillian Clarke

...poems that wound and sear the mind while also allowing an exorcism of the trappings of loss. --Hayden Murphy, Glasgow Herald

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 six 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) and Luck is the Hook (2018). 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 for Over the Moon and her services to poetry, 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 GCSE Poetry Live! events all over the country to more than 25,000 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 BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1780371209
• ISBN 13: 9781780371207
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160
• Illustrator: Imtiaz Dharker