The saviours of Sindhi poetry

Sindhi writer Sindhu moderates New Voices in Sindhi Poetry session, two speakers invited were female Sindhi poets.

KARACHI: The New Voices in Sindhi Poetry session on the second day of the fifth Karachi Literature Festival was welcomed mostly by Sindhis and people who were generally interested in the literary dialect.

Sindhi writer and professor Amar Sindhu moderated the session and the two speakers invited were female Sindhi poets, Rubina Abro and Rukhsana Preet.

Though there were a number of discussions and sessions on poetry but what stood out with this session was the fact that the panel consisted of women. This made the discussion interesting because we saw the perspective of women trying to make their marks in a language that generally seems to be sleeping in terms of making progress in the world of poetry.

The discussion brought light to the fact that women weren’t scarce in the field of Sindhi literature but the fact that the male dominant society won’t let female poets thrive, or even express themselves. The fact that these women broke boundaries and decided to write is an act of bravery itself.

They decided to break the conventions of entering the literary field. No subject was left unturned, be it alcohol, love or even the anatomy. Nothing was left alien to the discussion.

The women showed how they wrote from experience and how they made their poems more authentic and inspirational because writing in a society where generally your voice is suppressed, is an ordeal and a battle on its own, but that’s what makes them original.

Their poems don’t just speak to a Sindhi audience but a sub-continental audience in general, an audience that specially reaches out to women.

Rubina Abro, who found her inspiration in the works of the late Sindhi poet Sheikh Ayaz, spoke about the struggles she faced when she was writing poetry in her village near Larkana. “Women have two choices when they live in rural areas of the country - they either write or get married,” said Abro. “My writing was never encouraged at home. When my first poem got published and appreciated, that is when I got the encouragement to write more and break free from the norms of my village.”

There were many girls who started out with Abro but couldn’t continue writing because they got married. She said that she hopes that these limitations would end and women would freely express themselves.

On the other hand, Rukhsana Preet touched upon the fact on how women are stereotyped when they choose to write poetry. She spoke about how women are labelled as “emotional” in their poems. Rukhsana rejected this. “Just because we are women, we are labelled as being emotional. That is not the case. We are also a part of society, we also take interest in politics and world affairs and that’s where we get our inspiration from.”