Moniza Alvi
Moniza Alvi | |
|---|---|
| Born | 2 February 1954  Lahore |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupation | Poet |
| Website | http://moniza.co.uk/ |
Moniza Alvi
Life and education
Moniza Alvi was born in Lahore, Pakistan, to a Pakistani father and a British mother.[3] Her father moved to Hatfield, Hertfordshire, in England when Alvi was few months old.[4] She did not revisit Pakistan until after the publication of one of her first books of poems – The Country at My Shoulder. She worked for several years as a high-school teacher but is currently a freelance writer and tutor, living in Norfolk.[citation needed]
Poetry
Peacock Luggage, a book of poems by Moniza Alvi and Peter Daniels, was published after the two poets jointly won the Poetry Business Prize in 1991, in Alvi's case for "Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan".[5] That poem and "An Unknown Girl" have featured on England's GCSE exam syllabus for young teenagers.[citation needed]
Since then, Moniza Alvi has written four poetry collections. The Country at My Shoulder (1993) led to her being selected for the
In 2002, she received a Cholmondeley Award for her poetry. In 2003 a selection of her poetry was published in a bilingual Dutch and English edition.[6] A selection from her earlier books, Split World: Poems 1990–2005, was published in 2008.[7]
On 16 January 2014, Alvi participated in the BBC Radio 3 series The Essay – Letters to a Young Poet. Taking Rainer Maria Rilke's classic text, Letters to a Young Poet as their inspiration, leading poets wrote a letter to a protégé.[8]
Selected works
Poetry
- Peacock Luggage (1991)
- A Bowl Of Warm Air (1996)
- Carrying my Wife (ISBN 978-1-85224-537-5
- Souls (Bloodaxe, 2002) ISBN 978-1-85224-585-6
- How the Stone Found Its Voice (Bloodaxe, 2005) ISBN 978-1-85224-694-5 – which was inspired by Kipling's Just So Stories
- Split World: Poems 1990–2005 (Bloodaxe, 2008) ISBN 978-1-85224-802-4
- Europa (2008)
- Homesick For The Earth (2011)
Recordings
- The Poetry Quartets 6 with George Szirtes, Michael Donaghy and Anne Stevenson (Bloodaxe / ISBN 978-1-85224-519-1
Further reading
- Sonja Lehmann: Moniza Alvi's Europa. Rewriting Myth from a Feminist Postcolonial Perspective, in: Verorten - Verhandeln – Verkörpern. Interdisziplinäre Analysen zu Raum und Geschlecht, edited by Silke Förschler, ISBN 9783839423998
References
- ISBN 978-1-55862-191-6.
- ^ Creamer, Ella (12 July 2023). "Royal Society of Literature aims to broaden representation as it announces 62 new fellows". The Guardian.
- ISBN 978-0-7864-3622-4.
- ^ Biography, Moniza Alvi website.
- ^ Sawnet Profile Archived 2 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine. Accessed March 2016.
- ISBN 90-76569-36-3.
- ISBN 978-1-85224-802-4.
- ^ "Moniza Alvi: The Essay, Letters to a Young Poet Episode 4 of 5", BBC Radio 3, 2014.
External links
- Official website
- Sawnet Profile
- Moniza Alvi at British Council: Literature
- Listen to Moniza Alvi reading her poetry - a British Library recording, 27 October 2008.
- BBC poetry reading 6 January 2009. (Audio, 3 mins)
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