Ghazal, marsiya and nasri nazm discussed by leading poets, scholars

Second day of Urdu conference features session dedicated to genres of Urdu poetry

KARACHI: Major Urdu poets Kishwar Naheed, Iftikhar Arif, Amjad Islam Amjad and Afzal Ahmed Syed shared their perspectives on poetry at a session, ‘Urdu Poetry - in the perspective of study’ at the 10^th International Urdu Conference on Friday.

The session also featured speeches by Dr Naumanul Haq, Jawed Hasan, and Tanvir Anjum on ghazal, marsiya and nasri nazm (prose poem) respectively.

“Following independence, our poetry reflected themes of melancholy and despondence while Urdu poetry outside Pakistan carried themes of migration and its associated subjects,” Naheed said. The genre of nasri nazm was evolved in the post-independence period and it expanded the scope of Urdu poetry as it accounted for themes that were largely ignored or could not have been incorporated by ghazal, she maintained.



“In nasri nazm, one presents a monologue depicting their life,” Naheed said. “The circumstances we are going through in our country demand a lot of pondering, However, we have forgotten how to effectively ponder over issues in our life,” she asserted, adding that nasri nazm was an effort to portray subject viewpoints.

Anjum remarked that the decade of 1970s saw the emergence of a large number of poets in Pakistan who made immense contributions to nasri nazm. “The young generation is liking nasri nazm,” she said. “The liberty offered by the prose poem enables poets to express their creativity freely,” she maintained.

According to Anjum, nasri nazm was a channel to express resistance. Nasri nazm has no space for idolisation, she claimed. “Nasri nazm is all about using the fewest possible words to express the largest possible meaning” she said. Amjad and Arif recited their poetry in the session which delighted the audience.



Syed commented on marsiya which was a popular form of poetry in India.“Marsiya reciters have played a significant role towards developing the literary landscape of Karachi,” Hasan said. He added that Karachi was the nursery of Marsiya reciters.

Form of marsiya was thriving as marsiyas are being written, recited as well as broadcast on electronic mediums, Hasan said.

Expressing his views on ghazal, Dr Haq claimed that poets were still writing good ghazals and the poetic genre held great stature in Urdu literature.