Fahmida Riaz The Poet in Dark Times

The Gender Studies programme,

ﻣد ﮨوﺷﯽ ﻧﮯ ﻣﺣﻠت ﮨﯽ ﻧہ دی School of Human Studies ﮨم ﻣڑ ﮐﮯ ﻧظﺎره ﮐر ﻟﯾﺗﮯ ﺑﭼﻧﮯ ﮐﯽ ﺗو ﺻورت ﺧﯾر ﻧہ invites you to ﺗﮭﯽ an open house discussion with درﻣﺎں ﮐﺎ ﮨﯽ ﭼﺎره ﮐر ﻟﯾﺗﮯ the poet ﭘل ﺑﮭر ﮐو ﮨﻣﺎرے ﮐﺎر ﺟﻧوں PM, Mon, 24 March, CR 11, AUD Campus 2.30 ﻏﻔﻠت ﺟو ﮔوارا ﮐر ﻟﯾﺗﮯ۔

मदहोशी ने मुहलत ही न दी Fahmida Riaz is modern Urdu’s foremost practitioner of the हम मुड़ के नजारा कर लेते political poem. Born in undivided British India in Meerut, she moved as a child to Sind, Pakistan. Her early experiments in the बचने की तो सूरत खैर न थी Urdu ghazal belong to the Progressive tradition, but with an दरमाँ का ही चारा कर लेते acute awareness of the gendered aspects of poetic language. पल भर को हमारे कार-ए-जुनूँ Her decisive break from that tradition came in the form of her collection Badan darida (Lacerated body; 1973) which presented ग़फ़लत जो गवारा कर लेते a female experience of sexuality, corporeality and violence through the nazm form, a vehicle of political poetry. From then Had drunkenness let up: on her poetry has fleshed out the nazm to write against all the I could have turned for a worldly matters that affect women, men, revolutionaries, and look. the wretched of our times. Her political journey has taken her If survival wasn’t across the border (she went into exile to India during the Martial possible, Law regime when a case carrying the death penalty was made I could have secured a against her in Pakistan) and into prose. balm at least, Had my possessed She is an accomplished novelist, and her novel Godavari (1989), deeds written during her exile in India, foretells the rise of Only managed majoritarianism in this country against the backdrop of the tribal thoughtlessness. land question. Riaz is a passionate translator of poetry, and has rendered Maulana Rumi and Shaikh Sadi’s Persian into English. FAHMIDA RIAZ, “Tiflan She has also intervened in debates about the language-question ki to kuch taqsir na thi” in Pakistan. Most recently, she has been the head of the Urdu Dictionary Board, a magisterial project to produce a multi- volume OED-like dictionary for the Urdu language.