Poet Farrukh Yar has given me a reason to reiterate my concerns about the demeaning of contemporary literary writing in Urdu and other Pakistani languages. In some panels organised at literary festivals and seminars, television programmes and academic conferences, it has become almost fashionable to say that whatever is currently being produced in our literature is of little consequence. Not just that the golden age is over, the very age for any high quality creative expression in our local languages is over.

This idea is promoted and professed most vociferously by three types of people: Anglophiles who can only read English, affluent middle-class readers who choose to read only English even if they know other languages, and those who have stopped reading any literature in any language out of lethargy and a lack of interest in contemporary writing. As a result, the mostly mediocre literary writing we produce in English is showcased as our representative work and a linguistic hierarchy is further strengthened. The impression given is that only those who write in English can give us a voice, an idiom, a countenance and an identity. This is both unfortunate and regrettable.

However, some Urdu readers and commentators also find it convenient to take the same view. It is hard for them to accept new voices and fresh lexicon, experimentation with themes and remoulding of genres. Many of them are unable to develop tools for appreciating contemporary poetry or prose. We all fall in love with those whom we read and relished during our college days, but it is important for a serious reader to go beyond that. I remember Munir Niazi once telling me that the critics of his generation and before had appointed a couple of classical Urdu and Persian poets as bouncers to guard the literary hall of fame in order to not let anyone from the later generations enter that hall. But we later saw that Niazi, along with Nasir Kazmi and Jaun Elia, found himself a permanent place in that same hall of fame.

I find some merit in critic Nasir Abbas Nayyar’s argument that the range we observe in the respective works of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Noon Meem Rashid, Meeraji, Akhtarul Iman, Akhtar Hussain Jafri and Majeed Amjad is not found easily in the Urdu poets who have succeeded them. But that does not mean — neither is this what Nayyar argues — that the possibility of having that range ceases to exist forever. In fact, Fahmida Riaz is one example where we observe a continuous widening of expression and depth of feeling at play in tandem with each other. Those who claim that nothing worthwhile is being produced in Urdu poetry any more are fooling themselves and others by undermining the presence and works of Iftikhar Arif, Zafar Iqbal, Khursheed Rizvi, Fahmida Riaz, Kishwar Naheed, Afzal Ahmed Syed and Sarmad Sehbai. Farrukh Yar is included in the generation that comes after them.

Yar’s third collection of poetry, Yeh Mah-o-Saal Yeh Umrein [These Times, These Ages], published in 2016 by Book Corner, Jhelum, is a reaffirmation of the possibilities that still lie within the realm of Urdu verse and a reassurance that the genre of Urdu nazm is both capable and willing to take new turns and find new vistas.

In his first two collections, I found Yar to be particularly impacted by the thought patterns of Majeed Amjad. If we can think in terms of a genealogy of poetry, it is natural for those coming soon after a major poet or poets to carry their genes. Not to say that Yar did not find his voice in the first two collections, but it does become even more clearly audible in his third. You can tell these are Yar’s poems, even if the name of the poet is not revealed — to quote from Iqtidar Javed’s critical note. Yar’s choice of words and themes has diversified and includes a subtle reflection on the fragmentation of our society. There is a constant tension between his real urban angst and his imagined rustic comfort that makes his voice distinct.

The writer is a poet and essayist based in Islamabad

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, December 3rd, 2017