Urdu literary journal Ijmaal held a survey a few months ago to find out the greatest living poet of Urdu. Eight poets and critics were asked about their opinion and the results declared Abrar Ahmad the greatest poet of ‘nazm’ and Zafar Iqbal the best in ‘ghazal’.

Though Abrar was declared the best, he has reservations about the “survey”. He says that asking eight people about their opinion is not a survey as surveys have a proper procedure and they are a part of research. In literature, a survey is not done this way.

He made it clear that five people had voted for him but a newspaper report mentioned four which is wrong. “However, I do not agree with this method. Time is the only criterion to gauge the status of a poet and it decides who is great and who is not and by time, I mean the next generations.”

Abrar says a great poet refuses to unfold quickly. For example, he explains, in the 1960s, Majeed Amjad was not that much known but later on he came to be known as a great poet.

Abrar Ahmad has been writing poetry since 1980 but he has published only two books of poetry till now, one of poems, Akhri Din Sey Pehlay (1997), and other of ghazals, Ghaflat Kay Brabar (2007). When asked why he keeps a low profile and why he has not written prolifically like other poets, he says: “I don’t write anything without inspiration and I don’t plan my poetry, it comes on its own. If I want to, I can write a poem or ghazal daily but I think that would not express my true poetic experience.”

It does not mean that he doesn’t work on his poetry after finishing a ghazal or nazm, he makes it clear.

“I keep making changes to my poems sometimes even after they are published in journals. I write at least eight to 10 drafts of a poem”.

Abrar negates the impression that he has not written enough, saying he has himself rejected the same amount of poetry that has been published. “I have written enough. I am just lazy about publishing.”

Abrar says he keeps a low profile because perhaps he is not sure of himself. Nowadays, poets upload poetry on Facebook and social media and get euphoric about it after the praise they receive from their friends for anything they write but literature.

“Poets like Munir Niazi and Zafar Iqbal have claims regarding their poetry but I don’t have any. That’s why I keep a low profile.”

Abrar was born at Jaranwala on Feb 16, 1954 and stayed in Chiniot until his 10th grade. He then moved to the GCU Lahore and did FSc before joining the Nishtar Medical College, Multan to study medicine. He remained posted as a doctor at different places in Punjab before settling in Lahore in 1988.

His poetry frequently takes up themes of existential angst, meaninglessness of life, disillusionment and displacement. “Displacement is one of the main issues in my poetry. I don’t belong to a place. It’s a sort of exile and I felt like it even before I took to writing as a poet.”

Abrar questions justification of life that why he should continue living but he finds the raison de’tre in the human bondage, including his family, friends and even patients. He avoids being labeled as existentialist, saying European existentialism is different from our existentialism due to different social conditions.

“Now many people have started writing poems in my style but when I started writing it there were not many around. I don’t think anybody influenced me. Whatever I have written bears my signature and it’s my own style,” he says when asked about the poets who influenced him.

Talking about the prose poem among Urdu poets, he says most of his poems are in metre. Only one third of them are non-metric.

There was an impression that Abrar was a poet of nazm and he should not write ghazals. “This all started with Zafar Iqbal who, during his presidential address at a session of Halqa Arbab-i-Zauq in 2006, asked why Abrar, a poet of nazm, should write ghazals. After that he also wrote about it and other people picked it up from there.”

He says that for him as a poet, both these forms of poetry are the same and he doesn’t plan what he should write. ‘However, I think I find my true expression in poem and its reason is its form.”

Abrar admits that he started writing ghazals very late, saying that until 2000, he had written only 10 to 15 ghazals. Abrar’s ghazal collection, Ghaflat Kay Brabar, was published in 2007. “I did not plan writing ghazals. It just happened as it was a sort of trance of writing ghazals.”

“First an impression was created that I am a nazm poet, not of ghazal. And now another impression is being created that I write prose poems.” About the current trends in Urdu poetry, he think they are more tilted towards ghazal which, though sporadically being excellent, remains stagnant and traditional.

“It is in nazm that we find the real aroma of our times. We must remember that nazm is the form that exposes the depth of experience and expression and it gives the poet no hiding space. Currently, nazm is doing fine and it’s going to grow further.”

Abrar says most of the experimentation in Urdu poetry does not reach the reader as our criticism is indifferent towards for being lost in theory. “Most of experimentation in form, diction and themes is nazm-centred because it’s impossible in ghazal due to its form.”

He says these days he is writing more poems again and third collection of poems will be published soon by Sanjh Publishers. To him, the Urdu poets who are best in his immediate seniors and contemporaries included Afzal Ahmed Syed, Sarwat Hussain, Azra Abbas, Muhammd Anwar Khalid, Javed Anwar, Naseer Ahmed Nasir, Parveen Tahir, Saleemur Rehman, Faheem Jozi, Yasmeen Hameed and Ali Muhammad Farshi. Among the new breed of poets, he thinks Fahim Shanas Kazmi and Syed Kashif Raza are writing well.

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2016