I Speak for the Devil

Imtiaz Dharker was born in Pakistan, grew up in Glasgow, and now divides her time between India and London. She draws upon this life of transitions for the themes in her second book: childhood, exile, journeying, home, and religious strife. In her latest collection, after Postcards from God, the woman's body is a territory, a thing that is possessed, owned by herself or by another. Her sequence, "They'll say, 'She must be from another country, '" traces a journey, starting with a striptease where the claims of nationality, religion and her veil, and gender are cast off, to allow an explanation of new territories, the spaces between countries, cultures, and religions. The powerful sequence of "devil" poems acknowledges that in many societies women are respected, or listened to, only when they are carrying someone else in their bodies - a child; a devil. For some, to be "possessed" is to be set free.