Turning trauma into verse: Review of Amitabha Bagchi’s English translation of poet Muneer Niazi’s ‘Lost Paradise’
2 years, 3 months ago

Turning trauma into verse: Review of Amitabha Bagchi’s English translation of poet Muneer Niazi’s ‘Lost Paradise’

The Hindu  

Most readers of Urdu-Hindi poetry are familiar with Muneer Niazi’s iconic nazm or free-verse poem Hamesha der kar deta hun main. Now, author-translator Amitabha Bagchi has finally brought Niazi’s verses — that capture the deepest emotions with startling revelations and innovative turns of phrase — to English, in Lost Paradise. He argues that his main goal in translating the poetry is not to bring Niazi to new readers, but to use ‘the idiom of one language… as a guide to create an idiom in another’. Bagchi has also dropped upper case letters to recreate the original Arabic script, but the singular pronoun, ‘I’, the ‘M’ of Muneer, and surprisingly an ‘O’ as address creep in.

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History of this topic

Review: Hazaar Rang Shaairi, selected, edited and translated by Anisur Rahman
2 years, 1 month ago

Review: Hazaar Rang Shaairi, selected, edited and translated by Anisur Rahman

Hindustan Times  

A genre deeply rooted in our collective cultural consciousness, the ghazal is no longer confined to Urdu. Anisur Rahman’s engaging selection and translation presents beguiling portrayals of love, both existential and universal, without excessive rhetorical flourishes, and places Urdu’s creative heritage within the Indian cultural matrix. For Rahman, Urdu poetic forms such as geet, qavvali, sehra, hajav, vaasokht, and rekhti …

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