Private Passions

Imtiaz Dharker was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014, and has published seven collections of her verse. She’s performed her poems to thousands of students at Poetry Live events, a scheme founded by her late husband Simon Rhys Powell. Imtiaz was born in Lahore in Pakistan and was six months old when her family moved to Glasgow. There she grew up as – in her words – “a Muslim Calvinist”. When she was 17 she fell in love with her first husband, married in secret and eloped to India. As a result she was disowned by her family, but began to publish her first poems. She illustrates all her collections with pen and ink drawings.