Shaikh Ayaz at 100: Bard of Sindh
‘I know that a time too will come
When over the earth of my burial you will cry
Some traveler will sing some song of mine passing by’
Shaikh Ayaz is not only one of the greatest Sindhi poets of the 20th century, but one of the greatest poets from the Indian subcontinent in any language. He was a people’s poet par excellence, a philosopher poet, perceptive intellectual and spokesman of public sentiments rolled into one; so his poetry had both force and lyricism. His countless Sindhi poetic collections were a product of this same popular struggle and were translated around the world. Ayaz received both jailtime and medals for his labours. A whole era was deemed to be his – as of the people, revolution and freedom. The talk charts Ayaz’s remarkable rise from the backwaters of urban Sindh to national public prominence as a resistance poet against oppression and dictatorship in Pakistan facing banning, prison and even death. Based on original translations of both his known and lesser-known poems addressing Bhittai – the patron sufi saint of Sindh –, intellectuals and even himself in his final years, as well as Ayaz’s autobiography and jail diary while imprisoned in the notorious Sahiwal prison and a discussion of perhaps his greatest creative achievement – an Urdu poetic translation of Bhittai from Sindhi, the talk is a timely tribute to the life and legacy of Shaikh Ayaz on his birth centenary.
About the Speaker:
Raza Naeem is an award-winning Pakistani writer, researcher and translator, trained in Political Economy at the University of Leeds in UK and in Middle Eastern history from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, USA. He is the recipient of a prestigious 2013-2014 Charles Wallace Trust Fellowship in the UK for his translation and interpretive work and has also written the foreword to the reissued edition of Abdullah Hussein’s classic partition novel ‘The Weary Generations’ (HarperCollins India, 2016). He is based in Lahore as the President of the Progressive Writers Association, and currently in the process of writing a book on the Sindhi anticolonial hero Hemu Kalani.