Mimi Khalvati was born in Iran and grew up on the Isle of Wight.   She trained at Drama Centre London and worked as an actor and director in Iran and the UK.

Her pamphlet, Persian Miniatures (Smith/Doorstop 1990) was a winner of the Poetry Business competition 1989. Her Carcanet collections include In White Ink (1991), Mirrorwork (1995), for which she received an Arts Council of England Writer’s Award, and Entries on Light (1997).   Her Selected Poems was published in 2000 and her collection, The Chine, in 2002.   An Italian/English bilingual edition of selected work will be published in Palermo.    The Meanest Flower (Carcanet 2007) is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

Mimi is the founder of The Poetry School and co-editor of the School's anthologies of new writing, Tying the Song (2000) and Entering the Tapestry (2003), published by Enitharmon Press.   She also edited Poetry to Calm Your Soul (MQP 2005).  

She is on the Council of Management of the Arvon Foundation, the Editorial Board of Wasafiri and is a PBS selector. She currently holds a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship at City University and will be a William Quarton Fellow at the International Writing Program in Iowa this year.

Comment:

On The Meanest Flower:

Mimi Khalvati is one of the most poignant and graceful poets writing in England currently. She has been a major influence on the use of the ghazal but she is far more than that. The Meanest Flower speaks often of grief and loss but also of great pleasure in the world, in gardens, in loves, in other people. Under the lyricism there is an iron control that achieves its grace through subtlety. Whether the poems are sonnets, ghazals or apparently light quatrains the reader is aware one is in the presence of a mind, a heart and an ear that has been schooled in depth, that finds it as naturally as do the flowers of the title.

George Szirtes

A lovely book, so accomplished, various, comprehensive and abundant. The poems are quick and touching, joyfully and sorrowfully open to the phenomena of the real world, they say what it feels like being human, the good and the ill of it, with passion, tact and lightness.

David Constantine

on The Chine:  

Mimi Khalvati is a prolific and courageous poet who has produced what for some would be a lifetime's body of work in a short decade.   The Chine , her fifth book, is a marvel of generosity, which mirrors the contours and contradictions of the poet's history.

Marilyn Hacker

Humane and generous, these are poems to read again and again; each re-reading will reveal further depths and subtleties.   The Chine should establish Mimi Khalvati as one of the foremost poets writing today.

Mary MacRae, Magma

 
I am convinced that while we may tire of brasher voices, Mimi Khalvati's work will endure.

Moniza Alvi, Poetry Wales

e-mail Mimi
web-site

Mimi at Desperado Literature

poetry favourites:
Carcanet
Poetry School
British Council

ppf shop on-line...
Poem Card -
"The Robin and the Egg Cup"
(& in Christmas set)

shop elsewhere ...
"The Meanest Flower",
"The Chine",
"Mimi Khalvati: Selected Poems",
"Entries on Light,
"Mirrorwork",
"In White Ink", Carcanet

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