The Poetry Society

Moniza Alvi

"The first poet I fell in love with as a teenager was Edward Thomas. We studied a selection of his poems in the Fifth Year in a book called Ten Twentieth Century Poets. (All the poets included were male, white and dead!)  I really felt that his voice, so alive and melancholy, was speaking to me. In the Sixth Form I was very excited by the Liverpool poets who seemed so modern and opened up the joys of youthfulness and the city. I started collecting other books in the Penguin Modern Poets series and became intrigued by some women poets – Elizabeth Jennings, Stevie Smith and Denise Levertov."

Poem by a teenaged Moniza Alvi

Death

A grim, hooded figure

in black

slides through

a darkened room

silently.

His face

transparent

grey.

Eyes that hold

thunder

pierce into the room

searching for victims

with avidity.

Translucent hands

smother with a cloak

of dense blackness.

A life has

ended…

Death departs…

There is