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    Luck is the Hook
    Luck is the Hook
    Luck is the Hook
    Ebook134 pages38 minutes

    Luck is the Hook

    By Imtiaz Dharker

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    About this ebook

    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.

    Luck Is the Hook is her sixth book from Bloodaxe. In these poems, chance plays a part in finding or losing people and places that are loved: a change in the weather, a trick of language, a bomb that misses its mark, six pomegranate seeds eaten by mistake; all these events cast long shadows and raise questions about who is recording them, about believing, not believing, wanting to believe.

    A knot undone at Loch Lomond snags over Glasgow, a seal swims in the Clyde, a ghost stalks her quarry at a stepped well, an elephant and a cathedral come face to face on the frozen Thames, a return ticket is thrown into the tide of Humber, strangers wash in. Even in an uncertain world, love tangles with luck, flights show up on the radar and technology keeps track of desire.

    Imtiaz Dharker was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry 2014 for Over the Moon and for her services to poetry.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloodaxe Books
    Release dateMar 29, 2018
    ISBN9781780372198
    Luck is the Hook
    Author

    Imtiaz Dharker

    Imtiaz Dharker grew up a Muslim Calvinist in a Lahori household in Glasgow, was adopted by India and married into Wales. She is an accomplished artist and documentary film-maker, and has published six books with Bloodaxe, Postcards from god (including Purdah) (1997), I Speak for the Devil (2001), The terrorist at my table (2006), Leaving Fingerprints (2009), Over the Moon (2014), and Luck Is the Hook (2018). All her poetry collections are illustrated with her drawings, which form an integral part of the books; she is one of very few poet-artists to work in this way. She was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry for 2014, presented to her by The Queen in spring 2015, and has also received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Over the Moon was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry 2014. Her poems are on the British GCSE and A Level English syllabus, and she reads with other poets at Poetry Live! events all over the country to more than 25,000 students a year. She has had a dozen solo exhibitions of drawings in India, London, Leeds, New York and Hong Kong. She scripts and directs films, many of them for non-government organisations in India, working in the area of shelter, education and health for women and children. In 2015 she appeared on the iconic BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs.

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      Book preview

      Luck is the Hook - Imtiaz Dharker

      IMTIAZ DHARKER

      LUCK IS THE HOOK

      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 was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry 2014. She is also an accomplished artist, and all her collections are illustrated with her drawings which form an integral part of her books.

      Luck Is the Hook is her sixth book from Bloodaxe. In these poems, chance plays a part in finding or losing people and places that are loved: a change in the weather, a trick of language, a bomb that misses its mark, six pomegranate seeds eaten by mistake; all these events cast long shadows and raise questions about who is recording them, about believing, not believing, wanting to believe.

      A knot undone at Loch Lomond snags over Glasgow, a seal swims in the Clyde, a ghost stalks her quarry at a stepped well, an elephant and a cathedral come face to face on the frozen Thames, a return ticket is thrown into the tide of Humber, strangers wash in. Even in an uncertain world, love tangles with luck, flights show up on the radar and technology keeps track of desire.

      ‘A celebratory, humane, wholly utterable, subtly crafted poetry. Its dark jewels are the magnificent poems of bereavement, which will surely endure. Reading her, one feels that were there to be a World Laureate, Imtiaz Dharker would be the only candidate.’ – Carol Ann Duffy on Over the Moon

      Cover drawing by Imtiaz Dharker

      IMTIAZ DHARKER

      Luck is the Hook

      for Ava, Luca, Sofia

      CONTENTS

      Title Page

      Dedication

      Chaudhri Sher Mobarik looks at the loch

      The Knot

      Stitch

      Snag

      Fankle

      Always, snow

      Kissing strangers

      Thaw

      To have all this

      Vespare

      Seal, River Clyde

      Letters to Glasgow

      Bairn

      Long

      Arc

      Made, Unmade

      A Haunting

      Six pomegranate seeds

      Underground

      The Letter

      Sixty seconds

      Sticks

      Beak

      Fix

      Six rings

      Rings

      A haunting of words

      Flight

      Hell-raiser

      Haunted

      Warning

      The trick

      Lapis Lazuli

      The Elephant is walking on the River Thames

      Hide

      First sight, through falling snow

      Fair

      Night vision

      Mr Wisdom Looks for China by the Thames

      Larks

      Heavenly Emporium

      If you are looking for Wisdom

      m) Those that have just broken the vase

      Cherub, St Paul’s

      Checkout

      Flight Radar

      Unexploded

      Exploded

      Channel of vision

      Brutal

      The Elephants are on the Piccadilly Line

      The Fabrick

      Ringing the changes

      The sound of your name

      Bloom

      Close to the sun

      Wolf, Words

      What will you tell the children?

      Out of line

      Gurh and ghee

      The Jump

      Send this

      This line, that thread

      The garden gnomes are on their mobile phones

      Drain

      Double

      3 a.m., the radio on

      Estuary

      This Tide of Humber

      Acknowledgements

      About the Author

      Copyright

      These ambiguities, redundancies, and deficiencies recall those attributed by Dr Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopaedia called the Heavenly Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. In its distant pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the emperor; (b) embalmed ones; (c) those that are trained; (d) suckling

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