Muslim Lifestyle

Leaving Fingerprints by Imtiaz Dharker

Issue 61 October 2009

Review by Ayman Khwaja

Resounding notes of displacement and exile remain lucid in Dharker’s new anthology, ‘Leaving Fingerprints’. Never one to shy away from dominating personal pronouns, her poetry is immersed in countless contradiction; an empowered voice resonating connotations of insecurity and dishevelment. Though compliant with the basic concepts of post-colonial discourse, Dharker’s poetry remains relatively opaque; allowing little or no penetration.
Her personal illustrations accompanying many of the poems in the anthology, however, provide the reader with a more intrinsic experience into her poetry. Aside from a few, welcome experimentations with form and structure, Dharker appears to be reiterating that she is most comfortable writing for the ‘GCSE English’ AQA syllabus-reader.