Stand out Harris: Khalique praised for his award winning book

Khalique is widely appreciated by readers for character-based poems which read like incisive short-fiction in verse.

ISLAMABAD:

Most poems revolve around the themes that concern the lives of common people - their feelings of anguish, pain, joy, love - which shape our contemporary existence.

This was the gist of a discussion after poetry reading organised by the South Asia Free media Association (SAFMA) Thursday to celebrate Harris Khalique’s winning of a literary excellence award for his Urdu poetry collection ‘Melay Mein’.

Harris Khalique’s canvass is broad and he is also known for his English poetry but the particular variety within the genre of Urdu nazm that he has himself developed to a large extent and is now widely appreciated by critics and readers alike is the character-based poems which read like incisive short-fiction in verse.

He read six such poems and about sixteen in all which were interspersed within an interactive dialogue of the poet with those present. He answered questions about literature, culture, politics, his personal pursuits and life experiences. Some from the city’s literati and friends of the poet also briefly spoke on the occasion.

Poems that moved the audience and brought tears to the eyes of many include Sindhi Hotel Lalu Khet, Rasheeda Domni, Jalianwala Bagh Se Wapsi Par, Nazeer Alam Gawayya and Ghulam Azam Musalli.

Poet Kishwar Naheed compared Harris Khalique’s concerns in poetry with those of the classical people’s poet Nazeer Akbarabadi’s in his times. “There is perhaps no one between them over a few hundred years in our literary tradition who is this much connected to each other with such common themes and such common understanding of life.”

She further said, “of course, Khalique’s poetry has a different diction and style from Nazeer as he is a modern poet.

Few would capture the contemporary angst, the humdrum existence that we are trapped in and the suffering of people of our times in the way he does.” Critic and scholar Professor Fateh Mohammed Malik called him one of his favourite poet besides being an organic public intellectual of Pakistan. “Harris Khalique stands out among his generation of poets. He is the true progressive voice of our times who inspires us to stand for the poor and the weak, not by sloganeering in verse but by using aesthetically powerful and contemporary poetic idiom.”

“It is both Khalique’s poetry and his siding with the oppressed that makes him an adored poet and a comrade from Gilgit-Baltistan to Sindh. For me his work represents the true people’s Pakistan we see emerging,” Malik added.

Earlier, writer and intellectual Ashfaq Saleem Mirza read a short critical paper on the artistic, intellectual and political ideals and contributions of Khalique. “The poet in him subverts classical moulds of ideas. But he is deeply rooted in South Asian culture and civilisation.” Broadcaster and writer Agha Nasir, poet Ali Akbar Natiq and Arshad Bhatti also spoke. The proceedings were conducted by Rafat Yasmin.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 18^th, 2014.