Split World: Poems 1990-2005

by Moniza Alvi

Moniza Alvi left Pakistan for England when a few months old. In her early work, she drew on real and imagined homelands in poems which are 'vivid, witty and imbued with unexpected and delicious glimpses of the surreal - this poet's third country' (Maura Dooley). Her less autobiographical later books are concerned not only with divisions between East and West but also with the interplay between inner and outer worlds, imagination and reality, physical and spiritual. "Split World" was published at the same time as Moniza Alvi's collection "Europa", and includes poems from five previous "The Country at My Shoulder" (1993), "A Bowl of Warm Air" (1996), "Carrying My Wife" (2000), "Souls" (2002) and "How the Stone Found Its Voice" (2005).

Genres: Poetry

304 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2008

About the author

Moniza Alvi was born in Lahore, Pakistan, and came to England when she was a few months old. She grew up in Hertfordshire and studied at the universities of York and London.

Peacock Luggage, a book of poems by Moniza Alvi and Peter Daniels, was published as a result of the two poets jointly winning the Poetry Business Prize in 1991. Since then, Moniza Alvi has written six poetry collections: The Country at My Shoulder (1993), which was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award, and which led to her being selected for the Poetry Society's New Generation Poets promotion; A Bowl of Warm Air (1996), one of the Independent on Sunday's Books of the Year; Carrying My Wife (2000), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; Souls (2002); How the Stone Found its Voice (2005), inspired by Kipling's Just So Stories and Europa(2008), a Poetry Book Society Choice and shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize. Also published in 2008 Split World includes poems from her first five collections.

Moniza's latest publication is Homesick for the Earth (2011) selected poems by the French poet Jules Supervielle with versions by Moniza Alvi.


Moniza Alvi now tutors for the Poetry School and lives in Norfolk. In 2002 she received a Cholmondeley Award for her poetry.

Reviews

[Pavel Nedelcu · Rating 4 out of 5]

INTERPRETING THE SPLIT

It is interesting to observe how this constant theme of Alvi’s work, this SPLIT which gives the title of this book spanning the first fifteen years of her poetry is originated in her personal history and (double: Pakistani-English) identity.

I enjoyed this collection because I could easily interpret the poems by reading them carefully. Nothing is really hidden in Alvi's poetry. One has to read carefully, that's all.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Moniza Alvi's work, especially her earlier poems, which concentrate more on her dual identity as a Pakistani Englishwoman. I particularly liked Hindi Urdu Bol Chaal as it is a poem about language. There's a surrealism to her work, which transcends physical concerns such as time and space, and I really enjoyed this. I borrowed this from the library, but it's a collection I would definitely read and re-read if I owned it.

[jules · Rating 2 out of 5]

One theme that is always present in Moniza Alvi's poems is fragmentation, no matter the year they were published in. This fragmentation is directly linked to Alvi's personal history: born in Pakistan from a Pakistani father and an English mother, she moved to England as a baby and didn't go back to Pakistan until much later. Growing up in Hertfordshire, she transferred in her surreal poems her own uneasiness and the feeling of alienation she felt as someone "in-between" Pakistan and England, not belonging to either country.
Apart from strictly autobiographical poems, in the two collections at the end of this book - Souls (2000) and How the Stone Found Its Voice (2005) - two different series of poems have a concept of their own, always marked with Alvi's typical surrealism.
Knowing the author's background and context the book is undoubtedly an interesting reading, even though I usually do not like contemporary poetry.