Soliloquies? Existing on Earth In Verse
By Tariq Alexander Qaiser
Champa Books
ISBN: 978-969-23154-1-8
142pp.

Tariq Alexander Qaiser is a distinguished, award-winning architect and a celebrated ecologist, filmmaker, photographer and author. His third book, and his first poetry collection, Soliloquies? Existing on Earth In Verse, engages with the many disciplines in which he works and brings together many aspects of life, ranging from the personal to the collective.

His commitment to ecology and Karachi’s rich but diminishing mangroves in particular, permeate the book, which is divided into seven sections, encompassing nature and time, life and living, the seen and unseen.

Into this he builds in photographs, which illuminate, or become a dialogue with specific poems, and are given further context by brief comments or verses in a small fine text. The collection incorporates a few Urdu poems by Qaiser too, duly transmuted by him into English — an assertion of bilingualism and identity, evident in his photographic books, Baltistan-Apricot Bloom (2015) and Samundar Par (2016).

The incisive ‘Foreword’ by Dr Ishrat Lindblad points out that, in the title Soliloquies?, “the word followed by a question mark focuses upon the inner doubts that assail a troubled soul as he observes the way we, human beings, are destroying our planet.” Interestingly, “the division of the book into seven sections” reminds her of Shakespeare’s famous soliloquy from As You Like It, “about the seven stages of man.”

An unusual collection of verse explores themes of nature and the environment and humanity’s attempts to mould them and co-exist

She perceives a similar pattern in Qaiser’s collection, which is divided into seven parts that “move from the first stage that describes the trees of life towards poems about ‘Fallen Leaves’, ‘Flowers Fallen’ and ‘Flowers Falling’... followed by a poem titled ‘Sad’, in the memory of his beloved father, towards the end of his life.”

Naeem Zamindar adds a personal aspect in his article ‘This book and TAQ’, describing Qaiser as “a cherished friend, a fellow traveller on the path of self realisation [who] embodies the Sufi, a seeker of truth and a soul courageously touched by life’s beauty.”

Qaiser sets the tone for “Soliloquies? with the prequel ‘The Beauty of Life’, a seven-line poem: “The inherent beauty of life/ So often overshadowed/ By the act of living/ Water, light, nature/ Looked at/ Not seen/ Just existing.”

The book’s first section ‘Tree: Verses to Exist By’ begins with ‘Impermanence’, a poem referring to life’s uncertainties and the narrator as “a receptacle: a sharer of memories”. The text opposite tells of a spectacular tree “at least 4 feet across/ two branches over 12” in girth, spreading arms as if in embrace”, which is now the damaged plant captured in the adjoining photograph where “The branch/ on the left had been sawed of” and human clutter lay nearby.

In marked contrast, the next poem, ‘Now the Amaltaas Glow’, celebrates the regeneration of nature, embodied by the flowering laburnum tree (amaltaas) in Covid times. Meanwhile, ‘The Scent of the Avicenna Bloom’ captures the magical, little known, scented blossoms flowering on islands along Karachi’s coast.

Qaiser looks at the relationship between humans and nature in ‘Section Two: Concrete… Contemplation’ where the prose-poem ‘A Short Contemplation’ compares polluted drains and waterways of urban Karachi to the pristine environment and “ecosystem created by nature” of the uninhabited mangroves of Karachi’s Korangi Creek; the poem ‘Of Stones and Memories’ faces a photograph of rocks and pebbles, and considers the unspoken.

The mood changes with ‘Just As I Saw It’, where “The singularity of beauty/ In spite of the ‘reality’/ Created here by us” is illuminated by the photograph of a shining sea and sky framing dhows by fishing villages.

The multi-layered resonances of light and dark, luminescence and shadow, permeate ‘Section Three: What I Want’, in which the poems ‘To My Fellow Seeker’ and ‘Light at Night’ celebrate the rising sun and the shining moon respectively. ‘The Gift’ rejoices in the multiplying of koi fish in a pond with leafy trees above: “The gulmohar and the fish/ The tree, the leaves/ The air, the water, the light/ The light/ What a gift given to me/ Nature/ Just being/ At its best.”

‘Section Four: What It Wants’ consists of three powerful poems. ‘A Joyful Life’ rejoices in the presence of migratory birds but expresses sorrow at their increasing absence, and is heightened by a 2016 photograph alongside of flamingoes on a Khiprianwala Island, which they no longer visit.

Another photograph portrays a channel in Bundal Island, flanked by luxurious trees, but the note below says these too have disappeared. The poem opposite ‘Custodian’, challenges the reader to assume responsibility and counteract these changes. This is followed by ‘Anthropocene’, a biting, angry critique, written in different scripts to express the poet’s anger at the destructive age in which we live.

In ‘Section Five: Commentary On Us’ the poems move beyond ecology to humanity. The narrator’s sorrow at brutal attacks on a minority community are given voice in ‘A Reflection’, which begins: “What is the value of fallen trees?/ when a society cannot even protect its/ communities/ What is the value of burnt timber/ when entire communities can/ become cinder?” ‘The Read-the Unread’ juxtaposes the celebration of the written word at a literary festival with a religious riot, which breaks out in a market over the mis-reading of an ordinary Arabic word.

On the other hand, Qaiser’s Urdu poem ‘Nur-i-Aas’, and its translation ‘The Light of Hope’, celebrates the moving, skillful rendition of the national anthem by college students. This is followed by two more, equally lyrical poems in Urdu, similarly built up of three-line verses, then transmuted/translated into English as poems with four-line verses. One of these poems, ‘Kya Poochha Tha Tu Ne’[‘Did You Ask?’] — protests against acts of bloodletting and revenge; the other ‘Haddi Pe Loha’[‘Iron on Bones’] employs the voice of an iron bench addressing the man seated on it at a train station and metaphorically encompasses humanity’s trials and hopes.

Six: By Design’ looks at the many dimensions of Qaiser’s profession and its relationship to human life and the environment. The first poem, ‘Design’, expresses the joy of designing and creativity and contributing to the community. The next poem, ‘Beyond the Board: Architects and Architecture’, begins: “Our creations are about the resilience of the human species/ the progress of humanity, the evolution of shining new worlds./ Our commissions are to build icons of note/ symbols of strength/ markers of place and time/ spaces of retreat.” The poem goes on to refer to ideas and thoughts transmuted into structures, and contrasts architecture as a celebration of life, art and existence with more ambivalent complexities: “Architecture is built by man/ Architecture is used by man/ Architecture often ignores man.”

In several poems, the shape and size of words are used to create images that reinforce aspirations and uncertainties. His bilingual poem ‘A Self-Portrait’ revolves around an abstract art installation called ‘Main’, which Qaiser created in which he is encased within a piece of furniture with a drum-like structure.

The poem originally consisted of three Urdu lines, which now form its first verse — their English transmutation form the poem’s remaining verses: “Hey Alexander/ See if you are free to move as you please./ Imprisoned you are in a cage/ But – these bars… let us hear their music… penned within/ Remember this Qaiser/ It is the constraints of the love of the lover/ that have kept you free.”

The section’s final poem, ‘Fallen Leaves’, which contemplates the unseen, paves the way for the final, and seventh section ‘Them’, which begins with ‘Flowers Fallen’, commemorating change, nature, regeneration and loss: “Born to life — fated to leave/ Earth to Earth — water to water/ Memories remain — always reverberating/ Auf wiedersehn/ Till we see each other again.”

The symbolism of this poem and the next, ‘Flowers Falling’, assume a personal aspect in the sequence of poems that follow, dedicated to family, friends and colleagues the poet has lost — ranging from his father, Feroze Qaiser, and his father-in-law Ali Akbar Shirazi, to his friend Ehsan-ul Haq, and the inspiring architect Arshad Abdullah. The whole culminates with a song to the splendour of life and the living and worlds to come.

This is a really unusual collection, a rich interweaving of so many aspects of nature, humanity and existence, visible or invisible.

The reviewer is the author of Hybrid Tapestries: The Development of Pakistani Literature in English

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, June 6th, 2025