In The Terrorist At My Table, Imtiaz Dharker strips through all our superfluous layers of pretend tolerance and states it baldly:
Here are the facts, fine
As onion rings.
The same ones can come chopped
Or sliced.
This collection brings the best of a rare poetic sensibility to the issues that concern us. If there are poems that don't work or falter, the ones that do compensate well enough. Enhanced by her sketches, the poems in her own words whisper:
My room is swimming,
Lit up from inside my head.
Here. Look Through me—Glass house.
We see it all in the combination of humour, honesty and loss in Campsie Fells and How to Cut a Pomegranate; in that fine cluster of poems titled Lascar Johhnie 1930; in the cry for understanding in Who Made Me? and The Right Word. There is no judgement, no taking sides, no partisan element, only a voice trying to make sense of this "travelling on the faultline of daily miracles".
