Life and Poetry of Sara Shagufta

Life and Poetry of Sara Shagufta
Author: Amrita Pritam
Publisher:
Total Pages: 136
Release: 1994
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

On the life of Sara Shuguftah, 20th century Urdu poet from Pakistan; includes her letters to the author and some other friends.

Beyond Belief

Beyond Belief
Author: Rukhsana Ahmad
Publisher: Women's Press (UK)
Total Pages: 216
Release: 1991
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN:

Progressive digte om kvinders kår i samfundet

Gender, Sexuality and Feminism in Pakistani Urdu Writing

Gender, Sexuality and Feminism in Pakistani Urdu Writing
Author: Amina Yaqin
Publisher: Anthem Studies in South Asian
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2021-08-17
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781785277559

This book sets out an unconventional literary history of progressive Urdu poetry by Pakistani women in the twentieth century. It introduces the resilient voices of poets who tread a fine line between the secular and sacred in an Islamic society to articulate a new feminist aesthetic.

Last Words from Montmartre

Last Words from Montmartre
Author: Qiu Miaojin
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2014-06-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1590177258

An NYRB Classics Original When the pioneering Taiwanese novelist Qiu Miaojin committed suicide in 1995 at age twenty-six, she left behind her unpublished masterpiece, Last Words from Montmartre. Unfolding through a series of letters written by an unnamed narrator, Last Words tells the story of a passionate relationship between two young women—their sexual awakening, their gradual breakup, and the devastating aftermath of their broken love. In a style that veers between extremes, from self-deprecation to pathos, compulsive repetition to rhapsodic musings, reticence to vulnerability, Qiu’s genre-bending novel is at once a psychological thriller, a sublime romance, and the author’s own suicide note. The letters (which, Qiu tells us, can be read in any order) leap between Paris, Taipei, and Tokyo. They display wrenching insights into what it means to live between cultures, languages, and genders—until the genderless character Zoë appears, and the narrator’s spiritual and physical identity is transformed. As powerfully raw and transcendent as Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask, Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Theresa Cha’s Dictée, to name but a few, Last Words from Montmartre proves Qiu Miaojin to be one of the finest experimentalists and modernist Chinese-language writers of our generation.

The Carpet Weaver

The Carpet Weaver
Author: Nemat Sadat
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2019-06-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9353055636

Afghanistan, 1977. Kanishka Nurzada, the son of a leading carpet seller, falls in love with his friend Maihan, with whom he shares his first kiss at the age of sixteen. Their romance must be kept secret in a nation where the death penalty is meted out to those deemed to be kuni, a derogatory term for gay men. And when war comes to Afghanistan, it brings even greater challenges-and danger-for the two lovers. From the cultural melting pot of Kabul to the horrors of an internment camp in Pakistan, Kanishka's arduous journey finally takes him to the USA in the desperate search for a place to call home-and the fervent hope of reuniting with his beloved Maihan. But destiny seems to have different plans in store for him. Intimate and powerful, The Carpet Weaver is a sweeping tale of a young gay man's struggle to come of age and find love in the face of brutal persecution.

Poems from the Edge of Extinction

Poems from the Edge of Extinction
Author: Chris McCabe
Publisher: Chambers
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2021-12-09
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781473693005

Gold winner in Poetry and Special Honors Award winner for Best Anthology Nautilus Book Awards The Beautiful New Treasury of Poetry in Endangered Languages, in Association with the National Poetry Library Featuring award-winning poets from cultures as diverse as the Ainu people of Japan to the Zoque of Mexico, with languages that range from the indigenous Ahtna of Alaska to the Shetlandic dialect of Scots, this evocative collection gathers together 50 of the finest poems in endangered, or vulnerable, languages from across the continents. With poems by influential, award-winning poets such as US poet laureate Joy Harjo, Hawad, Valzhyna Mort, and Jackie Kay, this collection offers a unique insight into both languages and poetry, taking the reader on an emotional, life-affirming journey into the cultures of these beautiful languages, celebrating our linguistic diversity and highlighting our commonalities and the fundamental role verbal art plays in human life. Each poem appears in its original form, alongside an English translation, and is accompanied by a commentary about the language, the poet and the poem - in a vibrant celebration of life, diversity, language, and the enduring power of poetry. One language is falling silent every two weeks. Half of the 7,000 languages spoken in the world today will be lost by the end of this century. With the loss of these languages, we also lose the unique poetic traditions of their speakers and writers. This timely anthology is passionately edited by widely published poet and UK National Poetry Librarian, Chris McCabe, who is also the founder of the Endangered Poetry Project, a major project launched by London's Southbank Centre to collect poetry written in the world's disappearing languages, and introduced by Dr Mandana Seyfeddinipur, Director of the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme and the Endangered Languages Archive at SOAS University of London, and Dr Martin Orwin, Senior Lecturer in Somali and Amharic, SOAS University of London. Languages included in the book: Assyrian; Belarusian; Chimiini; Irish Gaelic; Maori; Navajo; Patua; Rotuman; Saami; Scottish Gaelic; Welsh; Yiddish; Zoque Poets included in the book: Joy Harjo; Hawad; Jackie Kay; Aurélia Lassaque; Nineb Lamassu; Gearóid Mac Lochlainn; Valzhyna Mort; Laura Tohe; Taniel Varoujan; Avrom Sutzkever

Shapeshifter

Shapeshifter
Author: Alice Paalen Rahon
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2021-09-14
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1681375001

Poetry by one of the most powerful female figures in twentieth-century surrealism, now collected in English for the very first time. Alice Paalen Rahon was a shapeshifter, a surrealist poet turned painter who was born French and died a naturalized citizen of Mexico. Her first husband was the artist Wolfgang Paalen, among her lovers were Pablo Picasso and the poet Valentine Penrose, and over the years her circle of friends included Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Joan Miró, Paul Éluard, Man Ray, and Anaïs Nin. This bilingual edition of Rahon’s poems confirms the achievement of this little-known but visionary writer who defies categorization. Her spellbinding poems, inspired by prehistoric art, lost love, and travels around the globe, weave together dream, fantasy, and madness. For the first time in any language, this book gathers the three collections of poetry Rahon published in her lifetime, along with uncollected and unpublished poems and an album of portraits, manuscript pages, and artworks.

Home Reading Service

Home Reading Service
Author: Fabio Morábito
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2021-11-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1635420725

In this poignant novel, a man guilty of a minor offense finds purpose unexpectedly by way of his punishment—reading to others. After an accident—or “the misfortune,” as his cancer-ridden father’s caretaker, Celeste, calls it—Eduardo is sentenced to a year of community service reading to the elderly and disabled. Stripped of his driver’s license and feeling impotent as he nears thirty-five, he leads a dull, lonely life, chatting occasionally with the waitresses of a local restaurant or walking the streets of Cuernavaca. Once a quiet town known for its lush gardens and swimming pools, the “City of Eternal Spring” is now plagued by robberies, kidnappings, and the other myriad forms of violence bred by drug trafficking. At first, Eduardo seems unable to connect. He movingly reads the words of Dostoyevsky, Henry James, Daphne du Maurier, and more, but doesn’t truly understand them. His eccentric listeners—including two brothers, one mute, who moves his lips while the other acts as ventriloquist; deaf parents raising children they don’t know are hearing; and a beautiful, wheelchair-bound mezzo soprano—sense his detachment. Then Eduardo comes across a poem his father had copied by the Mexican poet Isabel Fraire, and it affects him as no literature has before. Through these fascinating characters, like the practical, quick-witted Celeste, who intuitively grasps poetry even though she never learned to read, Fabio Morábito shows how art can help us rediscover meaning in a corrupt, unequal society.

Ghalib

Ghalib
Author: Azra Raza
Publisher: Penguin Books India
Total Pages: 183
Release: 2009
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 0670081957

Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib (1797 1869) Lived At A Time Of Historic Change In India A Period When The British Conquest Of India Was In Its Ascendancy And The Mughal Empire Was Coming To An End. He Was Witness To The Ravagement Of Delhi And Its Courtly Culture, Culminating In The Catastrophe Of The Uprising Of 1857. This Trauma, Accompanied By His Personal Losses, Informs His Poetry, Evidenced In Divan-E-Ghalib Containing 235 Ghazals In Urdu, Ghazals Redolent With A Sense Of Loss, Grief And A Plangent Longing For A Vanished Way Of Life. Yet, What Sets His Poetry Apart Is An Irrepressible Sense Of Humour, Energy And Linguistic Delight That Drive His Darkest Lamentations. In Ghalib: Epistemologies Of Elegance, Sara Suleri Goodyear And Azra Raza Select Twenty-One Ghazals That Illustrate The Astonishing Range Of Ghalib S Many Voices And The Ideas That Populate His Poetry. Every Ghazal Is Accompanied By An Introduction, A Literal Translation And A Detailed Commentary That Elucidate The Complexities Of The Individual Sher And The Ghazal As A Whole. The Result Is An Erudite Introduction To The Work Of The Greatest Urdu Poet Of All Time, Which Will Be Invaluable Not Only To The Ghalib Aficionado But Also The Lay Reader Spellbound By The Intricate Imagery And The Dazzling Scope Of This Extraordinary Poet.

Spoken Word in the UK

Spoken Word in the UK
Author: Lucy English
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 479
Release: 2021-04-28
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1000373991

Spoken Word in the UK is a comprehensive and in-depth introduction to spoken word performance in the UK – its origins and development, its performers and audiences, and the vast array of different styles and characteristics that make it unique. Drawing together a wide range of authors including scholars, critics, and practitioners, each chapter gives a new perspective on performance poetics. The six sections of the book cover the essential elements of understanding the form and discuss how this key aspect of contemporary performance can be analysed stylistically, how its development fits into the context of performance in the UK, the ways in which its performers reach and engage with their audiences, and its place in the education system. Each chapter is a case study of one key aspect, example, or context of spoken word performance, combining to make the most wide-ranging account of this form of performance currently available. This is a crucial and ground-breaking companion for those studying or teaching spoken word performance, as well as scholars and researchers across the fields of theatre and performance studies, literary studies, and cultural studies.