Moniza Alvi

Moniza Alvi FRSL
Born	(1954-02-02)2 February 1954 Lahore, Pakistan
Alma mater	University of York
Occupation	Poet
Children	one daughter
Website	moniza.uk

Moniza Alvi FRSL (born 2 February 1954) is a British-Pakistani writer and poet. She has won several well-known prizes for her verse. ^[1] She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2023. ^[2]

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. ^[5]

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". ^[6] 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 over half a dozen poetry collections. He debut poetry collection, The Country at My Shoulder (1993), which was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 1993, ^[7] led to her being selected for the Poetry Society's New Generation Poets promotion in 1994. She also published a series of short stories, How the Stone Found its Voice (2005), inspired by Kipling's Just So Stories .^{[ citation needed ]}

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. ^[8] A selection from her earlier books, Split World: Poems 1990–2005, ^[9] was published alongside Europa in 2008. ^[10] Both Europa and her new collection At the Time of Partition, published in 2013, were then shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize in their respective years. ^{[11] [12]}

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. ^[13]

Selected works

Poetry

• Peacock Luggage (1991)
• The Country at My Shoulder (Oxford Poetry, 1993) ISBN   978-0-19283-125-5
• A Bowl Of Warm Air (1996)
• Carrying my Wife (Bloodaxe Books, 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   978-1-85224-694-5 – which was inspired by Kipling's Just So Stories
• Split World: Poems 1990–2005 (Bloodaxe, 2008) ISBN   978-1-85224-802-4
• Europa (Bloodaxe, 2008) ISBN   978-1852248031
• At the Time of Partition (Bloodaxe, 2013) ISBN   978-1-85224-984-7
• Homesick For The Earth (Bloodaxe, 2011) ISBN   978-1852249205
• Blackbird, Bye Bye (Bloodaxe, 2018) ISBN   978-1780374222
• Fairoz (Bloodaxe, 2022) ISBN   978-1780376004

Recordings

• The Poetry Quartets 6 with George Szirtes, Michael Donaghy and Anne Stevenson (Bloodaxe / British Council, 2001) 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, Rebekka Habermas and Nikola Roßbach. Bielefeld, transcript Verlag 2014, pp. 41–60, ISBN   9783839423998

References

1. Riggs, Thomas (1996). Contemporary Poets. St. James Press. p. 19. ISBN   978-1-55862-191-6.
2. Creamer, Ella (12 July 2023). "Royal Society of Literature aims to broaden representation as it announces 62 new fellows". The Guardian.
3. Mitali Pati Wong; Syed Khwaja Moinul Hassan (2013). The English Language Poetry of South Asians: A Critical Study. McFarland. pp. 92–4. ISBN   978-0-7864-3622-4.
4. Biography, Moniza Alvi website.
5. "Moniza Alvi - Literature". literature.britishcouncil.org. Retrieved 14 November 2024.
6. Sawnet Profile Archived 2 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine . Accessed March 2016.
7. "Moniza Alvi: The Country at My Shoulder – Oxford Poetry / OUP". The T. S. Eliot Prize. Retrieved 25 June 2025.
8. Het land aan mijn schouder. Translations by Kees Klok. Sliedrecht: Wagner & Van Santen, 2003. ISBN   90-76569-36-3.
9. Bloodaxe, ISBN   978-1-85224-802-4.
10. "Moniza Alvi: At the Time of Partition". Bloodaxe Books. Retrieved 25 June 2025.
11. "Moniza Alvi: Europa – Bloodaxe Books". The T. S. Eliot Prize. Retrieved 25 June 2025.
12. "Moniza Alvi: At the Time of Partition – Bloodaxe Books". The T. S. Eliot Prize. Retrieved 25 June 2025.
13. "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)