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Over the Moon
Winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, 2014
Shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award 2014
Imtiaz Dharker grew up a Muslim Calvinist in a Lahori household in Glasgow, was adopted by India and married into Wales. Her main themes are drawn from a life of transitions: childhood, exile, journeying, home, displacement, religious strife and terror, and latterly, grief. She is also an accomplished artist, and all her collections are illustrated with her drawings, which form an integral part of her books.
Over the Moon is her fifth book from Bloodaxe. These are poems of joy and sadness, of mourning and celebration: poems about music and feet, church bells, beds, café tables, bad language and sudden silence. In contrast with her previous work written amidst the hubbub of India, these new poems are mostly set in London, where she has built a new life with – and since the death of – her husband Simon Powell.
Imtiaz Dharker was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2014 for Over the Moon and for her services to poetry.
Shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award 2014
Imtiaz Dharker grew up a Muslim Calvinist in a Lahori household in Glasgow, was adopted by India and married into Wales. Her main themes are drawn from a life of transitions: childhood, exile, journeying, home, displacement, religious strife and terror, and latterly, grief. She is also an accomplished artist, and all her collections are illustrated with her drawings, which form an integral part of her books.
Over the Moon is her fifth book from Bloodaxe. These are poems of joy and sadness, of mourning and celebration: poems about music and feet, church bells, beds, café tables, bad language and sudden silence. In contrast with her previous work written amidst the hubbub of India, these new poems are mostly set in London, where she has built a new life with – and since the death of – her husband Simon Powell.
Imtiaz Dharker was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2014 for Over the Moon and for her services to poetry.
- GenresPoetry
160 pages, ebook
First published September 25, 2014
13 people are currently reading
283 people want to read
About the author
Imtiaz Dharker
21 books41 followersImtiaz Dharker (Born 1954) is a Scottish Muslim poet, artist and documentary film-maker.
She was born in Lahore to Pakistani parents. She was brought up in Glasgow where her family moved when she was less than a year old. She was married to Simon Powell, the founder of the organization Poetry Live, who passed away in October 2009 after surviving cancer for eleven years. Dharker divides her time between London, Wales, and Mumbai. She says she describes herself as a "Scottish Muslim Calvinist". Her daughter Ayesha Dharker, {whose father is Anil Dharker}, is a well known actress in international films, TV and stage.
As of 2010 she has written five books of poetry Purdah (1989), Postcards from God (1997), I Speak for the Devil (2001), The Terrorist at my Table (2006) and Leaving Fingerprints (2009) (all self-illustrated).
She is a prescribed poet on the British AQA GCSE English syllabus. Her poems 'Blessing' and 'This Room' are included in AQA Anthology, Different Cultures, Cluster 1 and 2 respectively.
The main themes of her poetry include home, freedom, journeys, geographical and cultural displacement, communal conflict and gender politics. All her books are published by the poetry publishing house Bloodaxe. Purdah And Other Poems deal with the various aspects of a Muslim woman's life where she experiences injustice, oppression and violence engineered through the culture of purdah.
She was part of the judging panel for the 2008 Manchester Poetry Prize, with Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke. For many she is seen as one of Britain's most inspirational contemporary poets.
Dharker is also a documentary film-maker and has scripted and directed over a hundred films and audio-visuals, centring on education, reproductive health and shelter for women and children. In 1980 she was awarded a Silver Lotus for a short film. An accomplished artist, she has had nine solo exhibitions of pen-and-ink drawings.
She was born in Lahore to Pakistani parents. She was brought up in Glasgow where her family moved when she was less than a year old. She was married to Simon Powell, the founder of the organization Poetry Live, who passed away in October 2009 after surviving cancer for eleven years. Dharker divides her time between London, Wales, and Mumbai. She says she describes herself as a "Scottish Muslim Calvinist". Her daughter Ayesha Dharker, {whose father is Anil Dharker}, is a well known actress in international films, TV and stage.
As of 2010 she has written five books of poetry Purdah (1989), Postcards from God (1997), I Speak for the Devil (2001), The Terrorist at my Table (2006) and Leaving Fingerprints (2009) (all self-illustrated).
She is a prescribed poet on the British AQA GCSE English syllabus. Her poems 'Blessing' and 'This Room' are included in AQA Anthology, Different Cultures, Cluster 1 and 2 respectively.
The main themes of her poetry include home, freedom, journeys, geographical and cultural displacement, communal conflict and gender politics. All her books are published by the poetry publishing house Bloodaxe. Purdah And Other Poems deal with the various aspects of a Muslim woman's life where she experiences injustice, oppression and violence engineered through the culture of purdah.
She was part of the judging panel for the 2008 Manchester Poetry Prize, with Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke. For many she is seen as one of Britain's most inspirational contemporary poets.
Dharker is also a documentary film-maker and has scripted and directed over a hundred films and audio-visuals, centring on education, reproductive health and shelter for women and children. In 1980 she was awarded a Silver Lotus for a short film. An accomplished artist, she has had nine solo exhibitions of pen-and-ink drawings.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
September 26, 2016
It's strange handing out starred reviews to poetry. In prose, if some of the pages are riveting, others leave you nonplussed, that's a three star novel, isn't it? But in poetry it's not like that. In poetry, if a handful of pages find their absolute mark that book stays with you forever.
Over The Moon isn't as good as say, Rapture, by Duffy. There are poems I shrugged over; i'm not really interested in reading about the moment the author had with a crane.
Tragically, for the purposes of this collection, half-way through Imtiaz Dharker's partner passed away. The poems she writes about him are absolutely extraordinary. His memory clings to the page through her words like dust on a high shelf. It's impossible to write with completeness about the loss of a true love but some of this is scorches the earth and comes as close as it is possible to just that.
Your eyes open, silver
for one second, close.
Your hand stops, falls still.
You send me no more messages
The machine by your bed
is saying prayers for you.
It keeps watch, tenderly interpreting
your body's needs.
It listens and records your every breath,
the turning of your blood, your heartbeat.
All night, all night, it pays close attention
to you. At dawn it stops.
I try to read its face.
The machine is blinking back
its tears.
Within this volume of poetry there is absolute truth. If you pay for it the price of a book only you have struck a bargain; if you're reading this review and wondering if you should read it, read it. Wondering is enough for me to know you would be bowled over by it in places.
And a late, heart-breaking visit from a swan might have you revisiting that moment with a crane, seeing old words in a new light.
Over The Moon isn't as good as say, Rapture, by Duffy. There are poems I shrugged over; i'm not really interested in reading about the moment the author had with a crane.
Tragically, for the purposes of this collection, half-way through Imtiaz Dharker's partner passed away. The poems she writes about him are absolutely extraordinary. His memory clings to the page through her words like dust on a high shelf. It's impossible to write with completeness about the loss of a true love but some of this is scorches the earth and comes as close as it is possible to just that.
Your eyes open, silver
for one second, close.
Your hand stops, falls still.
You send me no more messages
The machine by your bed
is saying prayers for you.
It keeps watch, tenderly interpreting
your body's needs.
It listens and records your every breath,
the turning of your blood, your heartbeat.
All night, all night, it pays close attention
to you. At dawn it stops.
I try to read its face.
The machine is blinking back
its tears.
Within this volume of poetry there is absolute truth. If you pay for it the price of a book only you have struck a bargain; if you're reading this review and wondering if you should read it, read it. Wondering is enough for me to know you would be bowled over by it in places.
And a late, heart-breaking visit from a swan might have you revisiting that moment with a crane, seeing old words in a new light.
November 19, 2025
A powerful collection of poems that, for me, built like a novel, in a way that no other poetry collection I've read has. A deeply moving tale of love and grief with a final poem that will bring a tear to the eye of those with the hardest of hearts.
July 4, 2024
A very beautiful book. Dharker's husband, Simon Powell, died in 2009 after an eleven year battle with cancer. This collection reflects her grief and sense of loss, with reflections on their life together and how his death affects her perception of the world. In addition, she illustrates the poems herself making reading this a very special experience; you are handling something precious and delicate that Dharker is offering you.
October 14, 2017
These poems are too rich and (often) too sad to read many at once. They're good, though, and the book as a whole is well worth the time.
September 27, 2020
It took me some time to get in to this little volume of poetry but somewhere about a quarter of the way into the book the poems started to connect with me. Just picking it up now I can see that on p50 I started turning the corners of the pages over to mark poems that I really liked. “The days the marks made sense” was the poem that started it off about her learning to read; then Night shift with “Marvellous Makanara”, a celebration of a daughter’s birth. During Lockdown what passes for my writing mojo deserted me and I felt like a dam: “Stab”, with its lines of “Stab the page... find the word that is not a word... Make one mark.” got me back into doing something creative with letters. Her poems detailing the illness and death of her husband are stunning: “Passport photo” is moving, and the twin poems of “Medium” and “Presence” are just perfect in terms of that need to contact one who is no longer with us.
And her tribute to Malala Yousafzai to “her mind, ... an orchard of in full bloom, a field humming under the sun... Bullet ... you are stupid. / You have failed. You cannot kill a book / or the buzzing in it.”
Um. So OK I liked the poems, and roughly a third of the pages are now (shock horror from a bibliophile!) dog eared.
Get a copy yourself from a bookshop: well worth the £12 from Bloodaxe Books.
Also support your local seller if you can get out under lockdown.
And her tribute to Malala Yousafzai to “her mind, ... an orchard of in full bloom, a field humming under the sun... Bullet ... you are stupid. / You have failed. You cannot kill a book / or the buzzing in it.”
Um. So OK I liked the poems, and roughly a third of the pages are now (shock horror from a bibliophile!) dog eared.
Get a copy yourself from a bookshop: well worth the £12 from Bloodaxe Books.
Also support your local seller if you can get out under lockdown.
April 30, 2019
Upon hearing Imtiaz Dharker was due to become the UK's poet laureate, I thought I better had read some of her work to see what the fuss was about.
I very much liked most of the poetry here. I liked to be taken from a bus and tower block in the UK to a cafe in Bombay and everything in between. There's a kind humor, a gentle but probing tone, a tendency to transcendence during the everyday that makes her work appealing. It appears unsophisticated - 'Is there a name for the thing/ you do when you're young?' but mostly ends up more complex and ambiguous: 'What is it called, living in Glasgow,/ dying to be French, dying to shrug and pout' and so on, here and elsewhere meditating on identity in surprisingly fresh ways.
I'm sure she'll also make a very good, accessible poet laureate for the contemporary generation without dumbing down.
The illustrations were great too.
I very much liked most of the poetry here. I liked to be taken from a bus and tower block in the UK to a cafe in Bombay and everything in between. There's a kind humor, a gentle but probing tone, a tendency to transcendence during the everyday that makes her work appealing. It appears unsophisticated - 'Is there a name for the thing/ you do when you're young?' but mostly ends up more complex and ambiguous: 'What is it called, living in Glasgow,/ dying to be French, dying to shrug and pout' and so on, here and elsewhere meditating on identity in surprisingly fresh ways.
I'm sure she'll also make a very good, accessible poet laureate for the contemporary generation without dumbing down.
The illustrations were great too.
August 27, 2017
wonderful
A lovely and life affirming collection despite the fact that many of the poems speak of grief and loss. And the illustrations are beautiful
A lovely and life affirming collection despite the fact that many of the poems speak of grief and loss. And the illustrations are beautiful
December 17, 2018
Will definitely reread one day. This is my first reading of Dharker's poems but certainly not my last.
June 2, 2016
Not sure about the drawings but I liked the poetry.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews