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In this episode, our hearts are full as we are joined by the glorious poet Imtiaz Dharker, talking about the poem that has been a friend to her: 'Meeting Point' by Louis MacNeice.

We are also thrilled to say that this episode will be with you in the month that Poems as Friends - The Poetry Exchange 10th Anniversary Anthology is published - on 9th May 2024. We are hugely grateful to everyone who has contributed poems and stories to its pages, and to all of you for your support and love for The Poetry Exchange over the last 10 years.

Imtiaz Dharker is one of the leading and most widely respected poets of our age. "Reading her, one feels that were there to be a World Laureate, Imtiaz Dharker would be the only candidate." - Carol Ann Duffy. Imtiaz Dharker grew up a 'Muslim Calvinist' in a Lahori household in Glasgow, was adopted by India and married into Wales. She was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2014. Her main themes are drawn from a life of transitions: childhood, exile, journeying, home, displacement, religious strife and terror, and latterly, grief.

On 23rd May 2024, Imtiaz's latest collection Shadow Reader is published by Bloodaxe Books. Shadow Reader is a radiant criss-cross of encounters, messages and Punjabi proverbs, shot through with the dark thread of an unwelcome prophecy.

We are so delighted to share this conversation with you in the month that Shadow Reader - and our anthology of Poems as Friends - join us in the world.

Imtiaz Dharker is in conversation with Fiona Bennett and Roy McFarlane.

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Meeting Point

by Louis MacNeice

Time was away and somewhere else,

There were two glasses and two chairs

And two people with the one pulse

(Somebody stopped the moving stairs):

Time was away and somewhere else.

And they were neither up nor down;

The stream’s music did not stop

Flowing through heather, limpid brown,

Although they sat in a coffee shop

And they were neither up nor down.

The bell was silent in the air

Holding its inverted poise—

Between the clang and clang a flower,

A brazen calyx of no noise:

The bell was silent in the air.

The camels crossed the miles of sand

That stretched around the cups and plates;

The desert was their own, they planned

To portion out the stars and dates:

The camels crossed the miles of sand.

Time was away and somewhere else.

The waiter did not come, the clock

Forgot them and the radio waltz

Came out like water from a rock:

Time was away and somewhere else.

Her fingers flicked away the ash

That bloomed again in tropic trees:

Not caring if the markets crash

When they had forests such as these,

Her fingers flicked away the ash.

God or whatever means the Good

Be praised that time can stop like this,

That what the heart has understood

Can verify in the body’s peace

God or whatever means the Good.

Time was away and she was here

And life no longer what it was,

The bell was silent in the air

And all the room one glow because

Time was away and she was here.

© 1967 by Louis MacNeice. Reproduced with permission of David Higham Associates, Ltd.

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