Mimi Khalvati's Selected Poems draws on her three Carcanet collections, In White Ink (1991), Mirrorwork (1995) and Entries on Light (1997). It provides us with the essential Khalvati, from the ambitiously wrought early formal poems, full of Persian and personal shadows, through to the meditations in the long sequence Entries on Light. She brings into English poetry distinct formal and tonal elements of Persian and Islamic provenance. A mature eroticism marks her poems; also, a feeling for nature in all its varieties. She is partial to the long poem built out of distinct parts, the sequence or series, from Plant Care in her first book to Entries on Light itself.
