Ahmed Faraz

I am a little slow getting this news because I have not been paying attention to the news this weekend.

From the International Heral Tribune:

The revolutionary Pakistani poet Ahmed Faraz, whose name is synonymous in South Asia with modern Urdu poetry, died Aug. 25 in Islamabad. He was 77.

The cause was kidney failure, said his son, Shibli Faraz.

He was earlier reported to have died while being treated in a Chicago hospital after a fall in Baltimore, but he returned to his homeland, where he died.

Popular among both the cognoscenti and the general public, he was one of the few poets from the subcontinent whose verses were read as well as sung. He was in great demand at the mushaira, social gatherings – usually after dusk – at which Urdu poets recite their poems.

Often compared to legends of the past like Mohammad Iqbal and Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Faraz was as popular in India as he was in his own country.

He enjoyed a near cult status in the pantheon of revolutionary poets. In India and other countries outside Pakistan, he was best known for his ghazals – poems expressing the writer’s feelings, especially about love – which were popularized by leading singers like Ghulam Ali, Mehdi Hasan, Runa Laila and Jagjit Singh.

…

An advocate for the poor and downtrodden, Faraz raised his voice against capitalists, usurpers and dictators. In the 1980s, he went into a six-year self-imposed exile in Canada and Europe during the era of General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, whose military rule of Pakistan he had condemned at a mushaira and whose power seemed to drive him to heights of inspiration.

Some of Faraz’s poetry in English translation here, a ghazal here and here. Information about the ghazal form here.