Moniza Alvi was born in Lahore, Pakistan. She was born to a Pakistani father and a British mother. Her father moved to Hatfield, Hertfordshire in England when she was a few months old.

She did not revisit Pakistan until after the publication of one of her first books of poems – The Country at My arm. She worked for several years as a high school teacher, but is now a freelance writer and tutor, living in Norfolk.

She and her husband, Robert, have a daughter named Alice.

Peacock Luggage, a book of poems by Moniza Alvi and Peter Daniels, was published as a result of the two poets jointly winning the Poetry Business Prize in 1991. Moniza Alvi went on to write five further poetry collections: The Country at My Shoulder (1993), which was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award, and which led to her being selected for the Poetry Society’s New Generation Poets promotion; A Bowl of Warm Air (1996), one of the Independent on Sunday’s Books of the Year;Carrying My Wife (2000), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; Souls (2002); and How the Stone Found its Voice (2005), inspired by Kipling’s Just So Stories.

Alvi says: “Presents from My Aunts…was one of the first poems I wrote. When I wrote this poem I wasn’t actually back in Pakistan. The girl in the poem would be me at about 13. The clothes seem to stick to her in an uncomfortable way, a bit like a kind of false skin, and she thinks things aren’t straightforward for her.I found it was important to write the Pakistan poems because I was getting in touch with my background. And maybe there’s a bit of a message behind the poems about something I went through, that I want to maybe open a few doors if possible.”

Moniza’s latest publication is At the Time of Partition (Bloodaxe, 2015) which was also a Poetry Book Society Choice and shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize.

After a long career as a secondary school teacher, Moniza Alvi now tutors for the Poetry School and lives in Norfolk. In 2002 she received a Cholmondeley Award for her poetry.