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Gold medal for poet

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queen's gold medal for poetry, imtiaz dharkar, over the moon‘A unique perspective and an essential voice in the diversity of English language poetry’.

Her Majesty’s Gold Medal for Poetry for 2014 has been awarded to Imtiaz Dharker.

The Poetry Medal Committee met at Windsor on 4 December and was unanimous in recommending the British poet Imtiaz Dharker as the 2014 recipient of Her Majesty’s Gold Medal for Poetry on the basis of her new collection Over the Moon and a lifetime’s contribution to poetry. The Queen has approved the award.

Born in Pakistan in 1954, Dharker grew up in Scotland, worked for many years in India and moved to Wales and London when she married the late Simon Powell.

Dharker is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and recipient of the Cholmondeley Award, has been Poet in Residence at Cambridge University Library, and has recently completed a series of poems based on the Archives of St Paul’s Cathedral.

Her collections include Purdah; Postcards from god; I speak for the devil; The terrorist at my table; Leaving Fingerprints; and Over the Moon.

Dharker ‘s poems are studied by GCSE and A Level students throughout Britain and, with Poetry Live!, she reads to over 25,000 students a year.

Dharker is also an artist who illustrates all her own books, and a documentary film maker.

The Gold Medal for Poetry was instituted by King George V in 1933 at the suggestion of the then Poet Laureate, John Masefield.

Recommendations for the award of the medal are made by a committee of eminent men and women of letters, selected by the Poet Laureate – currently Carol Ann Duffy.

Previous female recipients of The Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry are: Ruth Pitter in 1955; Frances Cornford, in 1959; Judith Wright in 1991; Kathleen Raine in 1992; U A Fanthorpe in 2003; Fleur Adcock in 2006; Gillian Clarke in 2010, and Jo Shapcott in 2011.

Duffy said: “Whether Imtiaz Dharker writes of exile, childhood, politics or grief her clear-eyed attention brings each subject dazzlingly into focus.

“She makes it look easy, this clarity and economy, but it is her deft phrasing, wit and grace that create this immediacy.

“She draws together her three countries: Pakistan, land of her birth, Britain and India, writing of the personal and the public with equal skill.

“Hers is a unique perspective and an essential voice in the diversity of English language poetry.

“It is a moral force – a force for good and a force for change – that refuses to see the world as anything less personal than an extended village of near neighbours sharing in common struggles for how best to live.”

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