Shamshad Khan (born 1964,

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by popula ...

) is a widely anthologised

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

-based poet. Khan was born in

in 1964 in a Pakistani family which later relocated to

. Khan's poems have been published in anthologies including ''Flame'', ''Poetry of Rebellion'', ''The Fire People'' (1998), ''Bittersweet'' (1999), ''Healing Strategies for Women at War'', ''Gargoyle'', ''Longman’s GCSE Poems for your Pocket'', ''Velocity'' and Redbeck Press’ anthology of British South Asian poets. Her 1994 short story, ‘The Woman and the Chair’ received critical acclaim. She has performed her work widely, and been broadcast on local and national radio in the UK including the BBC's Radio 4’s Love Thang and

Woman’s Hour ''Woman's Hour'' is a radio magazine programme broadcast in the United Kingdom on the BBC Light Programme, BBC Radio 2, and later BBC Radio 4. It has been on the air since 1946. History Created by Norman Collins and originally presented by A ...

. Khan has also worked as an editor on an anthology of black women’s poetry and advised the

Arts Council of England The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both h ...

North West on literature. She also presented a Radio 4 programme on the

Qaṣīda al-Burda ''Qasīdat al-Burda'' ( ar, قصيدة البردة, "Ode of the Mantle"), or ''al-Burda'' for short, is a thirteenth-century ode of praise for the Islamic prophet Muhammad composed by the eminent Sufi mystic Imam al-Busiri of Egypt. The poem ...

(also known as The Poem of the Cloak).The Poem of the Cloak

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...

, 5 July 2007. Accessed 14 September 2010.

Books

* 'The Woman and the Chair', in R. Ahmad and R. Gupta, eds., ''Flaming Spirits''. London: Virago Press. * (ed. with Marie Guise Williams and Tang Line) ''Healing Strategies for Women at War: Seven black women poets''. Manchester: Crocus Books, 1999. * Khan, Shamshad (2007) Megalomaniac, (Salt Modern Poets), Salt Publishing ( )

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Khan, Shamshad Living people Place of birth missing (living people) English people of Pakistani descent English women poets Writers from Leeds Writers from Manchester Alumni of the University of Manchester 1964 births