Riyaz Ul Khaliq 

KL NEWS NETWORK

SRINAGAR

Agha-Shahid-Ali

Come June 03 – Wednesday, valley’s highest seat of learning, Kashmir University, shall discuss critiques of Kashmir’s ‘forbidden’ poet – Agha Shahid Ali.

The English Department of Kashmir University is scheduled to hold a ‘talk’ and later an ‘Open Discussion’ on writer, academic and poet – late Agha Shahid Ali, famous for his literary compilation, ‘The Country without a Post Office’.

Educated at the KU, and later at Hindu College, University of Delhi, Shahid earned doctorate in English Literature from Pennsylvania State University in 1984, and later an MFA from University of Arizona in 1985, in the United States.

He went to on hold various teaching positions in nine universities and colleges in Indian mainland and the US.

Interestingly, being Shahid’s Alma mater – the KU – at one point in time ‘declined’ to let its students learn from this scholarly Non Resident Kashmiri.

Prof R Raj Rao from Pune University shall present his paper on Euro-American Critiques on Agha Shahid Ali. Noted writer and poet, Prof Rao has formerly headed department of English at Pune University.

The discussion shall be held in the ‘Seminar Hall’ of Humanities Block in the main campus of Kashmir University from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM.

Besides expressing love for his homeland in The Country Without a Post Office, Shahid was a translator of the noted Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz (The Rebel’s Silhouette; Selected Poems); more so, he also edited the Middle East and Central Asia segment of Jeffery Paine’s Poetry of Our World.

Setting his collection of English poems in a book form – Call Me Ishmael Tonight – his poems are being featured in American Alphabets: 25 Contemporary Poets (2006) and other anthologies.

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