Earth & Glimmer: Poetry & Prose
By Haya Fatima Sehgal
Liberty Publishing
ISBN: 978-627-7626-24-2
137pp.

In one of the poems of her talented debut text with Liberty Publishing, author Haya Sehgal (who has already made a name for herself as a journalist) writes “Poetry, you have saved this world.”

The line concludes a sonnet titled ‘Poetry’ and encapsulates the essence of the writer’s agenda — to locate beauty not simply in that which relates to loveliness, but also in the realms of betrayal and hardship.

This is the sort of volume that merits being visited and revisited again and again. Even a cursory perusal enables some eye-catching pieces on love, loss and longing to arrest the reader’s attention. What is truly breathtaking, in my opinion, is the sheer scope of Haya’s writing; she handles political and nationalistic tensions with the same ostensible ease and grace with which she writes about familial love and sensory depiction.

Speaking of the senses, all five of them come into play within her literary canvas, regardless of whether she is writing about the fading smell of beloved sweaters, rainbows, petrichor (a complex word that alludes to the fresh scent of a rain-infused landscape), or sea-glass and the raging magnificence of the Karachi coastline.

Although a comparison was made during her Karachi Literature Festival book launch between her work and that of iconic Urdu poet Jaun Elia, Haya Sehgal’s social-minded leanings and desire for justice, coupled with the literary sensibility of her work, make her far more akin to an early version of Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

A recent collection of poetry and poetic prose presents one with a different interpretive angle and nuance of feeling on each re-reading

Possessing Bengali blood from both her father and mother’s side (which explains the almost preternatural grace with which she can carry a sari), Haya’s writing demonstrates a deep and complex connection with the concept of homeland, evidenced by sincere and moving pieces such as ‘Land of the pure’, ‘A city called Karachi’ and ‘Land Mass’. Although the title notes that both poetry and prose are part of this collection, in point of fact, even the so-called prose writings read like extended prose-poems.

Haya’s father, notable security expert Ikram Sehgal once wrote of his harrowing time as a prisoner of war (POW) in an Indian camp, from which he eventually escaped (apparently he was the first POW in the 1971 war to do so). Therefore, although no stranger to the violence Subcontinental history connotes, the poetess presents her thoughts regarding nationalistic tensions in a manner that ‘glimmers’ with the type of talent Faiz presented in his early days.

It would be a mistake to assume that many of the poems are politically motivated, since a fair number of them are intensely personal in nature, too.

Due to a trick involving stream of consciousness, I was reminded (while reading some of Haya’s political poems which focus on Pakistan) of Faiz’s nazm about the 1971 war, ‘Dhaka Se Waapsi Par’, since Haya writes of the fragility of the human condition with a similar sensitivity.

“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” wrote Sir Philip Sidney, and this is certainly true for Haya Sehgal, whose authorial agenda carries both a sense of purposeful morality as well as the desire to be heard.

But it would be a mistake to assume that many of the poems are politically motivated, since a fair number of them are intensely personal in nature, too. One of the most impressive things about the manner in which Haya plays with form and words can be seen by how a number of her pieces are strong one-liners, almost like Japanese haiku style compositions.

A single line on the sheer senselessness of war, or the manner in which labelling a woman a “witch” is callous to the point of being inhumane, enables the reader to step back from the longer poems and dwell seriously on the message implicit in the shorter ones.

It is both courageous and adventurous of a writer to take such structural risks while compiling a volume of poetry, and Haya is to be applauded for not shrinking back from literary experimentation. Insofar as English-language poets are concerned, I was strongly reminded at points of the work of D.H. Lawrence, who (although he was better known for his novels) was a capable poet, especially when it came to a marriage of textual matter and diverse types of form.

Of all the forms of creative writing, be it drama, prose or poetry, the last is often the most challenging, due to its heavy reliance on metaphor and a turn of phrase that can all too easily be rendered ineffectual if it fails to capture the reader’s interest.

Sehgal is linguistically skilled and excels at consolidating a world of emotion in just a few words. An example of this is her opening line for ‘Clay doll’ which begins by noting “The shape of violence is ancient…” — a sentiment and literary fragment that is elegant and heavy with meaning.

William Blake spoke of seeing “the world in a grain of sand” and it would not be erroneous to assume that Haya is one of a handful of people who really can visualise the world in that fashion. Interestingly, one of her single-line poems is titled ‘Grain’ and states “I think you left a grain of me behind.” Although ostensibly simple, it is undoubtedly Blakeian in its undertones.

There is a strong feminist undertow to the segment of the creative ocean that constitutes Haya’s writing. One of my personal favourites was ‘Child bride’, both for its sensual imagery as well as the sense of feminine powerlessness depicted in it: “I am served like sweet cake,” claims one of the lines grimly.

As noted above, Haya is adept at handling metaphors (every worthy poet needs to be) and her comparison of a neglected girl-child to torn flower petals in yet another piece resonates with both pathos as well as a poignant sense of the aesthetic.

The book is eminently readable and, in its own way, rather gripping. Moreover, as with truly good poetry, every time one returns to re-read a poem of Haya’s, it presents one with a different interpretive angle and nuance of feeling.

Haya Sehgal’s English is undoubtedly skillful and elegant, but it is also infused with an earthy and natural quality that makes perusing this book a pleasurable as well as memorable experience.

The reviewer is associate professor of social sciences and liberal arts at the Institute of Business Administration.

She has also authored a collection of short stories Timeless College Tales

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, April 28th, 2024