Dareechah-e-Nigaarish

Dareechah-e-Nigaarish
Toronto, ON
Canada
talat.afroze@dareechah.com

Improve Your Writing Skills

اپنی اُردو تخلیقات کو بہتر کیسے بنائیں

How to Improve your Writing Skills

I believe that all great poetry materializes from a sacred revelation conveyed in a subtle way telepathically to the Poet . . . all great poets can absorb the divine telepathic revelation termed Aamad in Urdu and can translate it into great poetry while others, lesser calibre poets, are not talented enough to capture all the strength and beauty of the message being conveyed to them . . . you may recall a couplet by Mirza Ghalib:

آتے ہیں غیب سے یہ مضامیں خیال میں

غالبؔ صریر ِ خامہ نوائے سروش ہے

Mirza Ghalib says in his couplet above that the content of his poetry comes to him from the Great Unknown in this Universe . . . the scratching sound which the pen makes on paper in the dead of night as the Poet writes is really the flapping of the wings of Angels as they hover over the Poet to convey divine thoughts to benefit and guide humanity . . . All great poetry, whether it is philosophical poetry or imagistic poetry or narrative poetry where narrative poetry includes all great romantic poetry, ultimately triggers a resonance in our hearts and guides our hearts towards Love as the greatest of all divine gifts bequeathed upon Man . . . Only and only Love can change this Universe for the better . . .

منیر نیازی کا ایک انٹرویو

مجید امجد کی نظم نئے لوگو ہر نئے شاعر کو پُکار رہی ہے ۔ ۔ ۔

ہر کوئی اپنی کہانی کہنا چاہتا ہے ۔ ۔ ۔ یہ پیغام شے لندر سنگھ کے لکھے گیت موسم بیتا جائے میں جھلکتا ہے ۔ ۔ ۔

مجید امجد شاعر اور سماج کی دوُری کے بارے میں لکھتے ہیں ۔ ۔ ۔

One fan of my web site Dareechah emailed me in March, 2021 to say that he would like to learn Urdu poetry. Here is my reply which I emailed to him:

Aadaab. I don't believe poetry can be LEARNED . . . I don't know how you were able to reach this conclusion ... Please tell me where you heard this that poetry can be learned. If this were true you would see at least one academy or college or university department where students could pay a fee and learn poetry.

My bhai you are either a poet or you are not a poet .... there is no state of being where you are not a poet and then you learn this from someone or some book and then you emerge as a poet . . .

How do we know if we are a poet or not ? When we are growing up, around the time we are in Matric class or are in College years, something happens (mysterious) and one day we get into a trance like mood where time and location disappear and an INNER VOICE starts speaking to us . . . that is AAMAD

آمد

and we grab a pencil or pen and start writing down what the inner voice is whispering in our ear . . . Someone said long ago (a goraa gentleman living in Europe) that POETRY is overheard soliloquy . . .
شاعری وُہ خود کلامی ہے جو پڑھنے والے نے سُن لی ہے

Another old gentleman from Europe has said KNOW THYSELF
خود کو جانو ۔ ۔ ۔ اپنی ذات کی پہچان ہی تمہیں تمہاری زندگی کا راستہ بتائے گی

So, my brother, think back to your Matric school days and your College days (you have not mentioned your age so I don't know whether to call you baitaa or brother . . . I am 61 years old now ...)

Anyway, think back to those days of early jawani . . . did an inner voice whisper something in your ear and did you write down the words that came into your mind at this critical time of Aamad ? If this has happened, then you are a poet and you should always write down what the inner voice says to you
Ghalib wrote long ago: The sound the Poet's pen makes on paper while writing is the whispering of the Angels

غالب ؔ صریر ِ خامہ نوائے سروش ہے

What else can I tell you ... When I was a high school boy studying in Cathedral High School, Mall road, Lahore and later when I was a student in F.Sc and B.Sc. at Forman Christian College, these whisperings happened in my ear and I wrote my first Urdu poem . . .

لوگ کچھ اور طرح کے

باتیں اور طرح کی

نئے جادو افسانے
کھوجیں اپنے اندر کے
کچھ گھور نہاں خانے

طلعت افروز ۔ ۔ ۔

Maybe reading important jadeed Urdu poets like Majeed Amjad and Munir Niazi, Fahmida Riaz, Parveen Shakir, Nasir Kazmi and Ahmad Faraz will kindle a spark within you, my bro . . . so, please read the examples of modern Urdu poetry I have selected and presented on my web site Dareechah

خیر اندیش

طلعت افروز

Here is a link to my web site Dareechah's Improve Your Writing web page:

Dareechah-e-Nigaarish - Improve Your Writing Skills

Also there is a book recommended for you:

A Passion for Narrative: A Guide to Writing Fiction - Revised Edition

For all Dareechah web site fans:

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.

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

Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly

$9.31

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

Kindle Edition Auto-delivered wirelessly

$9.39

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.

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