Life and education

Moniza Alvi was born in Lahore

Lahore

Lahore is the capital of the Pakistani province of Punjab and the second largest city in the country. With a rich and fabulous history dating back to over a thousand years ago, Lahore is no doubt Pakistan's cultural capital. One of the most densely populated cities in the world, Lahore remains a...

, Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

. She was born to a Pakistani father and a British mother. Her father moved to Hatfield, Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England. The county town is Hertford.The county is one of the Home Counties and lies inland, bordered by Greater London , Buckinghamshire , Bedfordshire , Cambridgeshire and...

 in England when she was a few months old. She did not revisit Pakistan until after the publication of her first book of poems - The Country over my Shoulder. She worked for several years as a high school teacher, but is now a freelance writer and tutor, living in Norfolk. She and her husband, Robert, have a daughter named Alice.

Poetry

Alvi says: "Presents from My Aunts...was one of the first poems I wrote. When I wrote this poem, I hadn't actually been back to Pakistan. The girl in the poem would be me at about 13. The clothes seem to stick to her in an uncomfortable way, a bit like a kind of false skin, and she thinks things aren't straightforward for her.I found it was important to write the Pakistan poems because I was getting in touch with my background. And maybe there's a bit of a message behind the poems about something I went through, that I want to maybe open a few doors if possible."

Peacock Luggage, a book of poems by Moniza Alvi and Peter Daniels, was published as a result of the two poets winning together the Poetry Business Prize in 1991, in Alvi's case for 'Presents from my aunts in Pakistan'. That poem and 'An Unknown Girl' have featured on England's GCSE exam syllabus for young teenagers.

Since then, Moniza Alvi has written four poetry collections. The Country at My Shoulder (1993) led to her being selected for the Poetry Society

Poetry Society

The Poetry Society is a membership organisation, open to all, whose stated aim is "to promote the study, use and enjoyment of poetry".The Society was founded in London in February 1909 as the Poetry Recital Society, becoming the Poetry Society in 1912...

's New Generation Poets promotion. She also published a series of short stories How the Stone Found its Voice (2005), inspired by Kipling's Just So Stories

Just So Stories

The Just So Stories for Little Children were written by British author Rudyard Kipling. They are highly fantasised origin stories and are among Kipling's best known works.-Description:...

.

In 2002 she received a Cholmondeley Award

Cholmondeley Award

The Cholmondeley Award is an annual award for poetry given by the Society of Authors in the United Kingdom. Awards honour distinguished poets, from a fund endowed by the late Dowager Marchioness of Cholmondeley in 1966...

 for her poetry. In 2003 a selection of her poetry was published in a bilingual Dutch and English edition. A selection from her earlier books, Split World: Poems 1990–2005, was published in 2008.

Poetry

• Carrying my Wife (Bloodaxe, 2000) ISBN 978-1-85224-537-5
• Souls (Bloodaxe, 2002) ISBN 978-1-85224-585-6
• How the Stone Found its Voice (Bloodaxe, 2005) ISBN 978-1-58224-694-5
• Split World: Poems 1990-2005 (Bloodaxe, 2008) ISBN 978-1-85224-802-4

Recordings

• The Poetry Quartets 6 with George Szirtes, Michael Donaghy and Anne Stevenson (Bloodaxe / British Council 2001) ISBN 978-1-85224-519-1

External links

• Moniza Alvi's website
• Sawnet Profile
• Listen to Moniza Alvi reading her poetry - a British Library recording, 27 October 2008.
• BBC poetry reading 6 January 2009. (Audio, 3 mins)