One of the UK's most popular poets, Imtiaz Dharker's latest book, <i >The Terrorist At My Table</i>, was launched recently.
Occasionally I get a phone call from them asking my nationality. When they hear I’m a British national, they say thanks and hang up.
Born in Lahore, raised in Glasgow, did you always feel an outsider in India?
Who doesn’t feel an outsider in India? I was always an outsider, but in a good way. Living on the faultlines of cultures can be exciting.
So where exactly is home?
I have many homes—in Bombay, Scotland, London, and now Wales, after my marriage in December (to Simon Powell).
You haven’t changed your name after your marriage?
I have four books under that name, so we decided that I should keep my old name.
Post 9/11 has been hard on writers, especially poets?
We’re all having a hard time, poetry is more needed now than at any other time.
Why did you choose the Alhambra when BBC asked you to pick a place to write poems in?
I wanted to take this territory back for poets, this model of Paradise that Bin Laden claimed for Muslim supremacy.
And yet poetry is dying out?
Not poetry but the media space for it. We have to waylay and kidnap people with poems.
You’ve never been tempted to write anything other than poetry?
No, poems are such a concentrated experience.
Why did you choose your daughter (actress Ayesha Dharker) to read aloud your poems?
We’ve been doing these poems on BBC Radio—she knows them and has lived with them.
So much bad poetry in the world—how to stop this deluge of bilge?
Writing poetry is not easy. Young poets should listen to poets from across the world.