Topic: urdu poetry

New collection of Rashid’s nazms, compiled & edited by festival director Amitabh Baghel, attempts to revive the poet's voice and make him more visible.

Hailed as one of the greatest Persion/Urdu poets of the 19th Century, Mirza Ghalib died on 15 Feb 1869 at age 71. In this edition of ThePrint Quiz, let’s see how much you know him.

In 'The Essential Ghalib’, Anisur Rahman presents an exemplary selection of Mirza Ghalib’s Urdu couplets, translated in English along with critical commentaries.

Waziri says she chose Jafri's ‘Mera Safar’ not only because aligned with this year’s theme of ‘resurgence’, but also because it spoke of eternal hope in the ‘dystopian times we live in’.

Translator Ranjit Hoskote shared translations of Mir’s verses on social media, as part of ‘Project Mir’, which later took the shape of his recent book, ‘The Homeland’s an Ocean’.

Oral historian Sohail Hashmi into a new wave of dissent in Urdu poetry at a Delhi workshop earlier this month. ‘It’s asking important questions, raising serious issues.’

While Sir Syed’s advocacy for realism and scientific thinking drew attacks such as being labelled a ‘satan’ and ‘a leader of thieves,’ Altaf Hussain Hali’s poetry, which promoted reason and advised moving away from artificial metaphors, was largely deemed un-Islamic.

The launch of Rakhshanda Jalil’s ‘Love in the Time of Hate: In the Mirror of Urdu’ brought forth a conversation between poetry, politics, and prejudice.

The play, directed by Danish Husain, begins when the poet was still Abdul Hayee, a boy from Ludhiana. It then moved toward his time as one of Bollywood’s most famous lyricists.

The narrator of the mehfil highlighted how Urdu, disdainfully labelled rekhta or "assorted dialect", clashed with the refined Persian monopolisation of poetry.