January 20, 2007	Saturday	Zilhaj 29, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Jan 19: A collection of Yasmeen Hameed’s poetic combining her previous four books in one volume under a new title Doosri Zindagi was launched here by Imkaan, an old city literary organisation, at a well attended function at the Pakistan Academy of letters on Thursday. The sitting was chaired by noted writer and poet Aftab Iqbal Shamim.

Shabnam Shakeel and Kishwar Naheed greeted the work as a robust addition to Urdu poetry from a poet who was not just a poetess writing on female themes but a creative person exploring new grounds in thought and on the emotive landscape.

All the three speakers discovered a novel response in her verse to the changing reality. In that sense Aftab Iqbal Shameem said Yasmeen’s poetry represented what could truly be categorised as modern. He found a continuity of thought and feeling in her verse that spans and binds her work into an integral whole.

Shabnam Shakeel said that Yasmeen’s verse, particularly her ghazal, was unique in the sense the development of idea in a couplet of her’s was unpredictable. She was not following the traditional romanticism that characterised the work of some other contemporary poets.

Aftab Iqbal Shameem building on these comments pointed to the maturity of her verse which makes her stand out among her contemporaries.

“As the title of the book suggests, this was altogether a new voice in Urdu poetry, and a reader might think that he is being introduced one continuous unbroken dream. “That is how I look upon it”, the professor observed. However, I might write about her poetry in greater detail after a more careful look at her work.”

Kishwar Naheed chose the occasion to lampoon critics. She said they were still reluctant to admit women in the sanctum sanctorum of poetry which they regarded as their exclusive domain. She thought that Yasmeen’s verse should make them think on this premodern hang-up of theirs.

She warned against segregation of writers on the basis of gender. Kishwar also criticised media for using words poet and poetess. “The word poetess lost currency in England after the Victorian age but our newspapers are still using this word”, she lamented.

Yasmeen’s verses also looked at death as a fact of life not treating it as a tragedy. “We do not find these traits in other contemporary poets”, she observed.

Yasmeen Hameed recited some selected poems and ghazals from her book.

Anjum Khalique moderated the function, that brought together a large number of guests such as Iftikhar Arif, short-story writer Mansha Yad, Fehmida Riaz, Harris Khaleeque, Fareeda Hafeez, Shameem Ikramul Haque, Dr Rakshanda Nazeer, Ihsan Akbar, Mushir Anwar, Prof Anwar Husain Siddiqui, Jalil Aali, Shahed Hameed and many others.

Doosri Zindagi is a voluminous poetical collection spread over 670 pages with a price tag of Rs750.

Poet Yasmeen Hameed writes both in English and Urdu, and contributes every week in Dawn’s Books and Authors pages.