was born in Iran and grew up on the Isle of Wight. She trained at Drama Centre London and worked as an actor and director in Iran and the UK. Her pamphlet, Persian Miniatures (Smith/Doorstop 1990) was a winner of the Poetry Business competition 1989. Her Carcanet collections include In White Ink (1991), Mirrorwork (1995), for which she received an Arts Council of England Writer’s Award, and Entries on Light (1997). Her Selected Poems was published in 2000 and her collection, The Chine, in 2002. Mimi is the founder of The Poetry School and co-editor of the School's anthologies of new writing, Tying the Song (2000), Entering the Tapestry (2003) and I am twenty people! (2007), published by Enitharmon Press. She has held fellowships with the Royal Literary Fund at City University, the International Writing Program in Iowa and at the American School in London. In 2006 she received a Cholmondeley Award and her new collection, The Meanest Flower (Carcanet 2007), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, a Financial Times Book of the Year, and shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.