The Observer
Sunday February 4, 2007
Hilda Ogden is my muse
Daljit Nagra's vivid tales of immigrant
life and love are electrifying the world of poetry, says Rachel
Cooke
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here
Guardian
Thursday January 18, 2007
The bard of Dollis Hill
Having the country's biggest poetry publisher take on your
debut collection is a dream come true for an unknown poet.
But Daljit Nagra's greatest feat is capturing the experience
of British-born Indians, says Patrick Barkham
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here
The New Statesman
12 March 2007
Own-made styles
The narrator of "In a White Town", a poem in Daljit
Nagra's debut collection, used to feel embarrassed when his
mother went to market wearing a "pink kameez and baloon'd
bottoms". He admits that "I would have felt more
at home had she hidden/that illiterate body". The phrase
"illiterate body" tells us she cannot read and write,
but also implies that she is unreadable to English people
(perhaps including her son). Nagra's poems try to embody the
sentiments of such Punjabi Sikhs living in England, often
through his gloriously unembarrassed use of their idioms and
linguistic turns...Sameer Rahim
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here
Tower Poetry
March 2007
Alison Brackenbury reviews Look We Have Coming to
Dover
I took this book to Lapland. Its red cover smouldered by
heated gloves, under roofs with a metre of snow. I greeted
the blurb’s boast, “much awaited”, not with
the reviewer’s frozen snarl but the reader’s thawed
smile. I have indeed waited for this collection, tracking
stray poems through the snowy pages of magazines. It is a
book to fill a gap.
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here
BBC Newsnight review:
19 January, 2007
Programme presented by Hardeep Kohli
THE PANEL:
Paul Morley | Denise Mina | Sarah Churchwell | Ian McMillan
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here
BBC Collective: the interactive culture
magazine #275
An audio interview with a written article to go with it on
the back of my reading at the Edinburgh Festival 2007
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here
Canford School
Review of a Reading at Canford School in Wimborne
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here
Star Poet Shares His Knowledge in Twickenham
By Jean Lebleu
edited October 9, 2007
Aspiring local poets were treated to a rare opportunity on
October 6th when two-time Forward Prize winner Daljit Nagra
conducted a poetry workshop at the Twickenham Library. Participants
had the full attention of the critically-acclaimed poet who
has been featured in national newspapers and appeared on BBC
Two’s Newsnight Review just the evening prior to the
workshop. The unique three-hour event was organised with Mr.
Nagra by Praveen Mangani, Operations Manager, Library, London
Borough of Richmond, and Fiona Pearson and Liliana Ferreira,
both Reading Development Librarians.
The workshop was open to the public for the first 15 people
to reserve a place. Participants wrote a few short poems using
various techniques, read their work to the group and presented
their own previously-written poems for feedback.
Mr. Nagra encouraged the group to read their work regularly.
“Practice makes it easier to overcome any fears of publicly
reading,” he said. He also advised the poets to share
information with each other about sources and opportunities.
“It’s important to learn from each other,”
he said.
“There was an enormous amount of information,”
said participant Elizabeth Bell of East Sheen. “He shared
his knowledge like a rushing river.”
Mr. Nagra has been praised for the wit and intelligence with
which he relates the experiences of those who must integrate
themselves into a new culture. He first won the prestigious
Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem in 2004 for Look We
Have Coming to Dover!, and again in early October this year
for Best First Collection for his book of poems of the same
title, which was published in February 2007 by Faber and Faber.
His collection will soon be available in audio form.
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