Daljit Nagra

Poet and teacher

Nagra was the first poet to win the Forward Prize for both a first collection of poetry, Look, We Have Coming to Dover! (2007), and for its title poem. Nagra’s second collection, Tippoo Sultan’s Incredible White-Man Eating Tiger-Toy Machine!!! (2011) was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and his Ramayana (2013) was the Financial Times poetry Book of the Year.

Our Sunrise Radio with its lip sync of Bollywood lovers
pumping through the rows of emporium cubby holes

From ‘Our Town with the Whole of India!’ in Look We Have Coming to Dover! (London: Faber & Faber, 2007)

Was there once upon before partition a Púnjab whole? A Pan-jab of Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, anything?

From ‘The Punjab’ in Tippoo Sultan’s Incredible Whiteman Eating Tiger Toy Machine (London: Faber & Faber, 2011)

Daljit Nagra
by Madeleine Waller
C-type colour print, 2 June 2006
NPG x132076
© Madeleine Waller / National Portrait Gallery, London