Over the Moon

Imtiaz Dharker

• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781780371207
• eBook ISBN:
  9781780371801
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

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. '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. '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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Description
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Like that only
• Taal
• Bombil, Bumla, Bummalo
• Jurassic
• Number 106
• Hiraeth, Old Bombay
• Wild
• Gobstopper
• Brookhouse
• In Wales, wanting to be Italian
• Not for the Vroom Vroom Vroom
• Waiting for Crossrail
• The first sight of the train
• Rapt
• The City
• Undone
• The Appointment
• Watching the water
• The cranes
• Jewel-box
• Alan or David or John
• The day the marks made sense
• Wean
• Ghazals on the Grundig, Pingling in Pollokshields
• Nicked
• Speech balloon
• Meanwhile at the Irani Bakery
• Mumbai? Kissmiss?
• Signs of life
• Don’t Miss Out! Book Right Now for the Journey of a Lifetime!
• It doesn’t matter
• At Smithfield, waiting to get in
• True
• Chiller
• All-night café
• Night shift
• Christmas Eve on the Number 4
• I take
• Gift
• Ace Café
• A hundred and one
• Un salon con mil ventanas
• Talker
• Wiped
• Listener
• Stab
• You said something I did not understand
• Vigil
• Vroom
• After
• The other side of silence
• The closed door
• Rinse cycle
• Medium
• Presence
• The unwritten bed
• Recording uninterrupted
• Murmuration
• Passport photo
• Disappeared
• Threshold
• Late
• Ephemeral
• (Untitled)
• Spin
• Palimpsest
• When the copperplate cracks
• Kozo
• Digital
• Nefertiti in the prison block
• Trace
• Screen-saver
• The Conversation
• I swear
• Swing
• Swan for Christmas
• Invisible
• Passing
• 1977
• Litter
• Say his name
• Listening
• Fair copy
• A century later
• Drummer
• Midnight, Christmas Eve
• London Bells
• First words
• One foot
• Acknowledgements
• Biographical note
• Copyright