Background
She was born in Tehran, Iran in 1944. She grew up on the Isle of Wight and was educated in Switzerland at the University of Neuchâtel, and in London at the Drama Centre and the School of Oriental and African Studies.
( Entries on Light, Mimi Khalvati's third book, is a sing...)
Entries on Light, Mimi Khalvati's third book, is a single poem, a series of meditations on light, on what light is and does, how—as it changes—it invents and reinvents the things we see, are and were, how it inscribes our shadows and our feelings. The sea- and sky-scapes of these poems are vivid: dawn, storm, dusk, the pewtery or the bright mid-day. Each demands a different syntax, a distinctive rhythm and rhyme. Mimi Khalvati has always had a well-trained eye; she is also formally among the most resourceful poets writing today, able to close her lyrical moments with resonance and, when necessary, to leave a stanza open to the changes of the weather. If at times we think of Constable in the billowing movement of her fuller stanzas, we also—in short-phrased sections—are put in mind of the flat skies of Hokusai. She is a poet in whose vision east and west join.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1857543297/?tag=2022091-20
(In her second collection of poetry, Mimi Khalvati uses th...)
In her second collection of poetry, Mimi Khalvati uses the image of Islamic mirror-mosaic - found in palaces, barber shops and kebab houses. The shorter poems refract one another, the three long sequences act a mirror tryptych, their themes of art, nature, domestic life, memory, east and west draw the other poems together. She establishes a voice and questions its integrity. In many ways, it is a book about becoming, as the poet's children leave home and she must find a changed self and purpose, a new space.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1857541146/?tag=2022091-20
( Inspired by Shakespeare’s songs, the short poems of Emi...)
Inspired by Shakespeare’s songs, the short poems of Emily Dickinson, and Wordsworth’s Lucy poems, this collection of songlike poetry is based on the ubiquitous spread of weedslike the shallow rooting plants, small poems can grow anywhere. Featuring a number of traditional forms but also showcasing the ancient Persian Ghazal, these poems reinstate the joyful audible aspect of the lyric.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/185754868X/?tag=2022091-20
She was born in Tehran, Iran in 1944. She grew up on the Isle of Wight and was educated in Switzerland at the University of Neuchâtel, and in London at the Drama Centre and the School of Oriental and African Studies.
She then worked as a theatre director in Tehran, translating from English into Persian and devising new plays, as well as co-founding the Theatre in Exile group. She now lives in London Borough of Hackney, and is a Visiting Lecturer at Goldsmiths College and a director of the London Poetry School. Khalvati was 47 when her first book appeared in 1991.
Its title, In White Ink, derives from the work of Helene Cixous who claimed that women in the past have written "in white ink".
Michael Schmidt observes that Khalvati is "formally a most resourceful poet". She is also tutor at the Arvon Foundation, and has taught creative writing at universities and colleges in the United States of America and Britain.
( Entries on Light, Mimi Khalvati's third book, is a sing...)
( Inspired by Shakespeare’s songs, the short poems of Emi...)
(In her second collection of poetry, Mimi Khalvati uses th...)