Dareechah-e-Nigaarish

I am in no way qualified to give advice on how to improve one's Urdu poems. Nevertheless, some Dareechah fans have asked me about this subject.  Based on my own life experiences in writing Urdu poems, I would strongly advise you to do the following:

1. Keep on learning new words in Urdu... if you read a wide range of fiction and non-fiction in Urdu, your vocabulary and diction will expand over time... this is your palette of colors to use in your Urdu poems.

2. Stay true to your innermost urges, to your identity, your point of view... be fiercely individualistic in every Urdu poem you write.

3. Be courageous.... be daring.... never compromise.... go boldly where your unique experience is taking you, choose words appropriate to your experience and never be afraid to experiment with words and images in your poems.

4. Always remember, you are striving to create new images in verse... your aim should be to create new word combinations which bring the image alive... what the Chinese Nobel laureate Gao Xingjian called the "actualization of language"  i.e. the ability of the poet or writer to use words in such a way that the whole scene, the whole experience becomes alive for the reader.

5. Always remember the words of the great Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer  about understanding your past, learning from your past... he wrote :

"A human blind to the future, I could do no more than hope to  know.... We never even really understand what we have already lived through!!" 

(Child of All Nations, Page 13, ending lines of 4th para of Chapter 1; publisher: Penguin Books).

6. Remember also what Toer wrote through one of his characters about our most precious belonging... he wrote that the only wealth, the only heritage we collect during our existence in this universe is the fruit of our labors (the work we carry out) and our unique experience of Life: our memories and our understanding of them !!

7. Remember that "Everyone wants to talk ...  everyone wants to tell his or her story to the world!"  The difference between the common man and the Artist is that the Artist is blessed with a talent for story telling and a command over language!!  The great Chilean poet, Pablo Naruda, recounts in one of his poems how he realized that he could write poems and that this gave him his identity... in his poem he likens this realization to being without a face and getting a face with characteristic features !! His poem goes thus  :

           Poetry Arrived in Search of Me

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
In search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no,  they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires,
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.
                     

                        Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet, Nobel laureate.

Go buy and watch the Italian art movie "Il Poste" (The Postman with English subtitles; available from Amazon.com) about the great poet Pablo Naruda and his fictional interaction with a postman on an island near Italy: this interaction with Neruda transforms the postman into a poet, makes him realize his inner potential. A description of this movie also appears on Dareechah's Art movie section.

8.  Majeed Amjad's poem "Na-ay Logo!!!"  (see full text of this poem below) is great advice to all young poets to persevere and never loose that inner "tarang" ...  that "zest for creation" that sustains all creative artists !!

(this poem also appears on the home page of Dareechah)

 I started my own journey of self discovery when I was a college student in Lahore's Forman Christian College in the mid-1970's.  My first modern Urdu poetry purchases were "Shab e Rafta Kay Baad" by Majeed Amjad and "Maah e Muneer"  by Munir Niazi.

These two great modern Urdu poets showed me new and novel ways of using Urdu words to express emotions and experiences ...  stories.  I realized that I could write Urdu poems and started on my journey of expression, trying to tell my story which continues to this day...

 Mohtaram Majeed Amjad (first one from left) with some of his Sahiwal literary friends including Professor Khawaja Mohammad Zikriya. The person right next to Majeed Amjad  might be Punjabi poet Mazhar Tirmizi (wrote the hit Punjabi Geet "UmraaN langiyaaN pubbaaN bhaar").

Majeed Amjad's Urdu poem "Na-ay Logo!" should be a beacon to all young and upcoming modern Urdu poets

Everyone wants to tell their story.... but our time in this Universe is limited and fleeting.... this is summed up beautifully in this song written by Shailendra Singh 

        "Mausam Beetaa Jaye !"

Some of the many Electronic Books on Creative Writing Available from www.amazon.com

The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Poetry

Alex Davis and Lee Jenkins

Kindle Edition

Portable MFA in Creative Writing by New York Writers Workshop (May 13, 2006)
Note: MFA is an acronym for Master of Fine Arts

Writing Fiction: The Practical Guide from New York's Acclaimed Creative Writing School by Gotham Writers' Workshop (Aug 1, 2003)

The Cambridge Companion to Creative Writing (Cambridge Companions to Literature) by David Morley and Philip Neilsen (Mar 19, 2012)

Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing (The Empson Lectures) by Margaret Atwood (Mar 7, 2002)

from the pen of Canada's best loved writer, author of "The Hand Maiden's Tale" and many other bestselling novels.

On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft by Stephen King

(Oct 3 2000) - Kindle eBook   from the pen of  Stephen King, the author of countless bestselling horror stories and the touching novel "The Body" which was adapted into the hit Hollywood movie "Stand By Me" by director Rob Reiner.

• CDN$ 14.99 Kindle Edition

(560)  560 Reviews

 Books on Creative Writing, especially on writing Poetry, recommended to Dareechah by

Professor Robert McGill,

Faculty Member for Creative Writing,

Department of English, University of Toronto:

Books on Creative Writing

Burroway, Janet. /Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft/. 3rd ed. New York: Pearson, 2011.

Dillard, Annie. /The Writing Life/. 1989. New York: HarperPerennial, 1990.

Gardner, John. /On Becoming a Novelist/. New York: Norton, 1999.

Hodgins, Jack. /A Passion for Narrative: A Guide for Writing Fiction/. 3rd ed. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2001.

Lamott, Anne. /Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life/. 1994. New York: Anchor, 1995.

Books on Fiction

Booth, Wayne C. /The Rhetoric of Fiction/. 1961. Second Edition. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983.

Kundera, Milan. /The Art of the Novel/. Trans. Linda Asher. New Yorker: Perennial Classics, 2000.

O’Connor, Flannery. /Mystery and Manners./ Ed. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald. London: Faber, 1984.

Wood, James. /How Fiction Works/. New York: Farrar, 2008.

Books on Poetry

Eliot, T. S. /On Poetry and Poets./ London: Faber, 1957.

Hollander, John. /Rhyme’s Reason: A Guide to English Verse/. 3rd ed. New Haven: Yale UP, 2001.

Pinsky, Robert. /The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide/. New York: Farrar, 1998.