Is poetry dead?

Poetry isn’t merely surviving — it's alive in protests, on billboards, in memes, echoing from parliament to Pepsi ads.

This is a question that comes up from time to time in drawing rooms, lecture halls and literary festivals across this country; and there is a fairly standard answer. Yes, poetry is either dead or very quickly dying.

A myriad of reasons are presented: young people are reading less and less, they are not committing themselves to the serious academic study of poetic nuances and devices, the education system no longer teaches humanities with the same rigor, social and governmental institutions no longer play the part of patron to arts and literature the way that they used to.

This is combined with the idea that on the literary landscape today there appears to be no figure of century-defining magnitude like the great bards of yester centuries. “Who is the Faiz, Rashid, or Josh of our century?” cynics may ask. 

All these factors combine to paint a picture where poetry is struggling for breath on its deathbed. 

As a young person in Karachi, however, I have often found myself in environments of “intense poeticism” that make me question these conclusions altogether.

One such environment that I had the pleasure of immersing myself in was the annual Sakinaan e Shehar e Quaid Aalmi Mushaira held on the 4th of January. A prominent feature of Karachi’s cultural landscape, the event this year was attended by fifty poets from across the Urdu Speaking world. As per tradition the event began at around 10 pm and extended into the early hours of the next day.

The incredibly visceral atmosphere at this event was truly a festival (mela rather) held in joyous celebration of poetry and literature: such an event could never have taken place in a society where poetry was dead or dying.

For one, the sheer magnitude of this event is something to take note of. This annual mushaira has been attended consistently by audiences of between ten and fifteen thousand people every year and the case this year was no different.

The attendance of ten thousand people at a poetic symposium featuring the most critically acclaimed writers should in itself be considered a major cultural achievement for Karachi. For contrast, in the English-speaking world even Pulitzer Prize winning poets often struggle to fill up modest conference halls at poetry readings; an audience of ten thousand people would be the stuff of a poet’s dreams.

And it was not just the size of the mushaira that was refreshing but also the passionate engagement of the audience.

In line with the tradition of such events the audience played an integral part of the artistic presentation of these verses. The audience was liberal with its praise not just in the form of the traditional daad but also through clapping and hooting.

Amongst the attendees were members of the literary and political elite of this city but a noticeable majority comprised young people who were also the most engaged and passionate. Even in the early hours of the next day the hall beamed with festivity as cups of chai and packets of chips were passed around and audience members leaped from gao takiyas to commend a particularly powerful shair.

Nostalgists may yearn for the early days of this event in the 80s when it would fill up the even grander National Stadium seating forty thousand people and would include great poets from across the border like Kaifi Azmi and Majrooh Sultanpuri.

Still, the gleam of our past must not blind us from recognising the beauty of our present. The Sakinaan E Shehar E Quaid Mushaira is one of countless held across the country nearly every week. These events are not reserved for an educated elite but are an integral part of the vibrant cultural lives of ordinary people for whom poetry is still a means of artistic, religious and cultural expression.

Another sign of the enduring relevance of poetry is found in the somewhat unlikely realm of marketing. Over the past year I have seen several instances of poets and poetry being used in advertisement campaigns in Pakistan.

Last year a biscuit brand ran a campaign selling boxes of biscuits featuring portraits and verses from the work of some of the greatest poets of our tradition including Allama Iqbal, Mirza Ghalib, Jigar Muradabadi and Mustafa Zaidi. These poets could be seen on billboards at prominent locations across the city and across television screens and social media; their verses in fine nastaliq script adorned the packets of cookies.

Another instance I came across this month was that of a ride hailing service somewhat ironically quoting Munir Niyazi’s popular verse “hamesha dair kardeta hun mein” on a billboard advertisement.

This is in addition to the countless musical renditions of classical poetry that have been sponsored by popular beverage brands. While the artistic merit and intention of such campaigns is certainly up for debate they do point to the extraordinary fact that ours is a society where poetry is so widespread and so popular that even when capitalists want to sell us a bottle of cola or a packet of biscuits they have to borrow a verse or two from Ghalib, Iqbal, Munir.

Even in the annals of politics poetry is widespread. If you are to sit through a session of parliament and begin counting verses of poetry you will find that more often than not politicians will lace their speeches with verses of poetry.

At Jalsas too it is not uncommon to hear a verse from Faiz or a nazm of Habib Jalib. Political campaigners and marketing agencies are by no means altruistic organisations committed to the spread of art and poetry, they are often companies backed by meticulous research committed to conveying a message to large groups of people in the language that best appeals to them.

To put it simply, they sell what sells best-but what is extraordinarily refreshing is that in this country what sells best is a beautiful verse of poetry.

Similar trends can be seen on social media where Tiktok edits featuring poetry are intensely popular, or on Instagram where one may see the strange phenomena of “Shayari Memes”. Here verses from poets like Ahmad Faraz and Jaun Eliya are juxtaposed against the daily concerns of young people to great comedic effect.

Many of these posts on social media will fetch thousands of likes and reshares. This too is of course testament to the enduring legacy of our poetic tradition and its ability to tenaciously reinvent itself.

Commenting on the general decline of poetry as a popular medium in the Western world many scholars and commentators have identified the advent of Modernism after the First World War as the defining moment that took poetry from the public to the private sphere and subsequently heralded its general decline into relative obscurity.

While the modernist movement undoubtedly produced giants of world literature like T. S. Eliot it did signal a poetic trend towards more obscure devices and a greater fascination with individual rather than collective concerns. Lamenting the state of contemporary poetry in a piece for Harper’s Magazine, the scholar Mark Edmundson quite poignantly identified that "few consequential poets now…are daring still to pronounce the word ‘us’". 

This general move in pronouns from “us” and “we” to “me” and “I” in 20th and 21st century English poetry is largely reflective of a greater individualistic trend in Western society as a whole.

Commenting on this a Newsweek article from 2010 identifies that around the 1980s western society became “intensely prosaic”. Perhaps the reason why poetry continues to survive in our society is because our society, despite everything, is still intensely poetic.

This intense poeticism is a result of the fact that the realm of poetry in our society is vast and communal, not constricted and personal. Here poetry as a medium and the themes that are deemed poetic are not reserved for an educated elite but rather there is a direct and indeed somewhat democratic relationship between the poet and their audience.

Contemporary poetry from our region has largely evaded the individualistic turn of artistic concerns in the west.

Poetic concerns in critically acclaimed Urdu poetry such as that of Iftikhar Arif or Anwar Shaoor still maintain a strong societal consciousness. While there may be a modernist trend in Urdu Poetry the tradition as a whole is largely avoidant of excessive obscurity and takes great pleasure in traditional metaphors and the expression of age old emotions.

Unlike modern Western poetry which often avoids or aims to reinvent traditional metres and patterns of rhyme, our tradition has largely held on to these poetic forms and the Ghazal is still the crown jewel of our literary culture.

Perhaps the most passionate example of communal poetic expression in Pakistani societies is in religious spaces. Across all religious traditions poetry is still an axis around which intense spiritual devotion can rotate.

Shrines across the country come to life as qawwals recite pieces that weave intricate chains of poetry that link centuries and languages from Arabic to Punjabi; the deeply evocative Marsiya of Mir Anees and Mirza Dabeer are still a staple of Majalis across the Urdusphere and the Naatiya kalaam of Ahmed Reza Khan bejeweled with ornate Arabic, Persian and Purbi still echoes across the country in meelad ceremonies.

A society where millions turn to poetry to express their most profound and indeed most intense emotions can hardly be considered a society where verse is in danger.

If poetry is a means of ascertaining the cultural pulse of a society, ours is a society defined by an intense yearning for tradition and artistic expression. While poetry may be popular, linguistic skill certainly needs cultivation.

While many may enjoy Persian, Arabic or classical Urdu verse in various communal settings few can actually understand the nuances of their meaning and expression.

The celebrated scholar Dr Noman Ul Haq has described this “loss of languages” as an “impairment” that has “mutilated its  (our societies) collective soul”.

In spite of this, all indicators point towards an earnest desire to learn and enjoy literature that is prevalent in young people. If contemplated with the resources to learn languages and poetic devices this generation of young people could offer extraordinarily exciting literary contributions.

In response to the question which demands to know why there is no poet today who can be classified with Mir, Ghalib or Iqbal I am reminded of Zehra Nigah, perhaps the greatest living Urdu poet, who spoke of the “Throne of ‘greatness’” in Urdu Poetry as one that is “left vacant for decades until once in a century someone like Ghalib and Mir may come along and take up the office”.

Who knows? Perhaps we will see the next Ghalib or Mir emerge from Tiktok or Instagram to take up their place on the throne of poetic greatness.

The idea may seem fantastical to some, but I, for one, have faith in our society and the current of intense poeticism that runs through it.