World Poetry Day: Young poets must write about love and humanity, says Tariq

The poet’s works deal with themes of class inequality, social injustice and deprivation

DERA GHAZI KHAN: “We should encourage our young poets to write about love and humanity…their message can be helpful in ending intolerance and injustice from our society,” Ahmad Khan Tariq, a Seraiki poet, said in an interview in connection with the World Poetry Day on Monday.

The elderly poet, who has been suffering from kidney complications for the last two years, was a contemporary of noted writers and poets including Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Ahmad Faraz, Munir Niazi, Ehsan Danish, Tufail Hoshiyar Puri, Mohsin Naqvi, Shakir Shujabadi, Iqbal Sokri, Shafqat Buzdar and Sarwar Karbalai. He said young poets from the Seraiki belt, especially, deserved to get access to opportunities to promote their language and culture. “I was 20 when I would get my poems and writings looked at by Noor Muhammad Sail,” Tariq recalled. “That’s when I got the pen name Tariq.”

His first collection of poems, Gharoon dur Tani, was published in 1982. Since then, he has penned down seven anthologies of poems, including Mattan Mal Walay, Maikun Se Lug Day, Huth Jori Jool, Susi Poonu, Main Kia Aakhan and Umrain da Porya.

Tariq’s works centre on themes of class inequality; social injustice, with regard to women in rural areas; deprivation; love for humanity; and problems faced by small farmers and the dispossessed.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 22^nd, 2016.