Imtiaz Dharker, winner of the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, selected the iconic Parisian bookshop, Shakespeare and Company. In this episode of Ex Libris, released to coincide with the store’s centenary, Imtiaz and Ben are joined by the famed store’s proprietor, Sylvia Whitman.The trio sit and chat on one of the tumbleweed beds that are made available in the shop’s library to aspiring writers. We are transported in this conversation not just to Kilometre Zero of Paris, on which faultline the shop resides, but also to a hinterland of imagination and wonder, thanks to Imtiaz’s poetry and the rich 100-year-strong history of Sylvia’s home.Imtiaz has published several collections of luminous, acclaimed poetry. Carol Ann Duffy wrote of her work: ‘Reading her, one feels that were there to be a World Laureate, Imtiaz Dharker would be the only candidate.’  …. Please find below a full transcript of Episode 3: Imtiaz DharkerShakespeare and Company, Paris  Welcome to Ex Libris, the podcast that, with the help of the greatest writers around, champions libraries and bookshops. These are our society’s safe spaces, particularly libraries - they are palaces for the people, free of charge, where everyone is welcome and nobody judged, yet they are in peril.  My name is Ben Holden, writer and producer, and, more to the point, fed up with this state of affairs, so in each episode of Ex Libris, I will be meeting an author in a library or independent bookshop of their choice, somewhere that has become resonant for them, and I hope that after you have listened to this episode, it will feel special to you too. Introduction  Ben Holden: This week I’m joined by poet, artist and filmmaker, Imtiaz Dharker.  Awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for poetry in 2014, Imtiaz has published seven collections of luminous verse.  Her poems feature on the British GCSE and A level syllabuses.  In her collections, her verses are always accompanied by exquisite drawings that are also drawn by Imtiaz, and her pictures have been exhibited in solo shows across the world, from India to Hong Kong, to New York.  Imtiaz lives in London, but her chosen Ex Libris venue has brought us to Paris. Imtiaz, this is an incredible place, an institution.  One of the most famous bookshops globally, but nevertheless, I have to ask, of all the bookshops or libraries, in all the cities, in all the world, why Shakespeare and Company? Imtiaz Dharker:Well, I heard a rumour of this place as far back as the seventies, when I was still living at home in a fairly strict household in Glasgow.  And, I heard about this bookshop in Paris where writers could stay the whole night living among books and sleeping with poetry, and it seemed to me like an incredibly exciting idea, and I dreamed of running away to this place.  For me, the idea of Paris was a place where anything was possible, where I could be anything that I imagined myself to be.  And, of course, I’d read by then Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Rimbaud, and was nostalgic for their Paris too; but the idea of this bookshop somehow crystallised for me everything that I wanted of life, because I was hungry for the kind of freedom that I imagined would be here, a place where there would be free thought and ideas without borderlines.  Finally, I did run away from home, but not to Paris, but to India, and in many ways, I grew up in India and it was an inspiring place to be, and it was also an experience that shocked me into writing poetry.  In some quiet, secret part of my mind, it still persisted and I held it there like some kind of myth of a bookshop, and I didn’t know whether it actually existed or not. Somewhere along the way, I also saw Wender’s film, ‘Wings of Desire’ - haunting images of angels in black raincoats listening to people’s thoughts in a library; their thoughts and hopes and fears