Exploring dualities: An interview with Moniza Alvi

Abstract

This interview with poet Moniza Alvi looks at issues of British‐ness, cultural duality and gender. Alvi also discusses her childhood in Hertfordshire, where Pakistan was a distant dream rather than a reality and which she reclaimed in her work, and which led her later to explore the surreal realms of the imagination. She goes on to speak on the themes of war and violence, mythology and gender which permeate her recent poetry collections.

Keywords:

• British poetry
• Pakistan
• dual worlds
• gender
• mythology
• war