Raman Mundair walked to the stage of the Market Theatre while singing a song in Urdu.

Before her performance was over, she had used her pleasant voice to remind us of a number of pop disco classics from the 70s and 80s, most of which were preludes to her own poetry.

At the end, she asked us to chant "last night a poet saved my life", and we obliged even though, perhaps, we had only been entertained.

Raman Mundair presents herself as a poet in exile. Born in India, she came to the UK as a child where her name "became a stumble that filled English mouths".

As she explained: "When I arrived in England, I was schooled out of my mother tongue". In a poem she asks, "How do you speak when there are no images of self to claim?"

Currently Mundair is writer in residence on the Shetland Isles, which might suggest a poet choosing exile. But her contemporary interests are evident in her involvement with the Stephen Lawrence case. She was a campaigner for legal justice and has written powerfully on the theme of racial murder, with lines like "the world your oyster, but London killed you".

Fluent in many tongues, the poet displays a strong attraction to lyricism, and she even presented new poems that had been written in the Shetland dialect.

She is an interesting new talent, at home with the beauties of language.

Gary Bills-Geddes