ISLAMABAD, Feb 22: Poet Joan Elia was remembered for his particular style in Ghazal at a meeting organized by the Islamabad Cultural Forum at the TVO Auditorium.

“The fire in his poetry engulfs the reader,” said Iftikhar Arif, chairman of the Pakistan Academy of Letters, who presided over the meeting held on Friday evening to pay tributes to the Urdu poet who died recently.

Evaluating the “craft” of the poet, he spoke of the ease with which Joan Elia arranged the words in tight Misras (hemistich) where there was no question of replacing a single word. He spoke of the poet being modern and classicist at the same time.

“Expression of sentiments, of restlessness, of engrossment and absorption is not incomplete even at the most sensitive level, and yet the lines are simple and full of movement,” Ifitikhar Arif pointed out. A good poet, besides other things, he said, was also known by the way he artistically combined the two lines of a couplet, because in such situations sometimes even many well-known poets seemed to be faltering on the way.

He also thought of the unity of his poetic effort, Faiz-like which meant that whatever theme he picked up, the treatment would show that it was being handled at a particular pedestal.

Iftikhar Arif also read out from a number of his poems. Some of the couplets are “Yun jo tkta hai assman ko tu. Koi rehta hai aasman mein kiya/Yeah mujhe chaen kiyoon nahin parta/ Aik hee sukh tha jahan meain kiya. Tegh baazi ka shaukh apni jagah. Aapto qatl-i-aam kar rahey hain. Kal aik qasr-i-aish mein bazm-i-sukhan thee John. Jo kuch bhi tha wahan woh ghareebon ka maal tha”.

Poet Zia Jallundhry called him a great poet and thought that the poet felt that he was not being given the place that his poetry deserved. He also commended the effort to arrange the function in his memory in Islamabad, and nostalgically remembered the days when many years ago he would meet Joan Elia and other poet-friends at Mushairas in Karachi quite often. He talked of his bold couplets which he wrote in agony when Dacca fell. (Iftikhar Arif, who worked with PTV in those days, described how they were telecast).

Prof Eshan Akbar, himself a poet, whose collection Hawa Say Baat has come out recently, read a detailed paper on the poet and discussed various phases of the poetic development of Joan Elia. He quoted various couplets of the poet, some of which were “Kaun is ghar kee dekh bhaal karay. Rose eik cheez too jaati hai/Kiya woh bisaat ulat gayee haan woh bisaat ulat gayee. Kiya woh jawan guzar gaeaiy. Haan woh jawan guzar gaeaiy. Nisbat-i-Ilim hai buhat hakim-i-shahar ko aziz. Us nay to kaar-i-jahal bhi bay ulema nahin kiya”.

Samina Raja, poetess and editor of a literary monthly, Aasar, in her paper, praised the poet for his particular diction, sensibility and use of words in a style that developed it own environment. Some of the couplets of the poet that she quoted were “Aiay khush khiram paoon kayb chalay to gin zara/Tujh ko kahan kahan na phirata raha hoon main/Apna misalia mujhe ab tak na mil saka. Zarron ko aftab banata raha hoon main. Elaj yeah hai keh majboor kar diya jaoon/Wagarna yoon to kisee kee sunee nahin main nay”.

Ashfaq Saleem Mirza, introducing the poet, started the proceedings by reading some excerpts from the foreword Niazmandana to the collection of poems Shaayad, and some of the couplets of Joan Elia. — Mufti Jamiluddin Ahmad.