Coming Full Circle: The Pakistan Trip and My Identity as a Writer

I am back from my Pakistan trip. It was by far the most literarily productive vacation I’ve ever taken. Reasons being:

* I ran a Poetry Workshop in collaboration with Foundation for Arts, Culture and Education (FACE) which was a wonderful experience.

* I gave a poetry reading at an event organized for me by the South Asian Free Media Association (SAFMA), the Islamabad Cultural Forum and the stalwarts of the Islamabad literary scene.

* I was able to meet, learn from and exchange ideas with seasoned and emerging writers and become more informed on Pakistani poets who write or have written in English.

* I came back with tons of inspiration and future focus for my writing. Being in the thick of Pakistani culture, politics and society always fuels my poetry.

Being part of the Pakistani diaspora, like many other Pakistani-born-bred writers, I struggle with issues of continuous and interrupted identity and the weaving of two sensibilities: that of birth and that of adoption. This trip, for the first time, I felt the constant immersion and detachment, of being insider and outsider, has provided a space where ‘self-fashioning‘ can occur. The solidification of my identity as a writer has been incredibly liberating.

I think it has come with reconciling that my writing has always been a product of East and West, not just one or the other. I grew up in a family where quoting Ghalib, Meer, Faiz or any of the great Urdu poets was the norm, where dinner table conversations focused on the appreciation of a perfectly-turned verse and the double meaning in a ghazal couplet was food for endless conversation. What that engendered in me was a passion for reading and deep admiration for the wielders of ink and pen.

There was only one hurdle: I wrote poetry in English.

Mainly because I read voraciously in English.

While I read as much as I could of the great British and American poets, both classic and contemporary, my readings were confined to the level of deepening appreciation of literature and imitative expression in my work. At that time in Pakistan, the avenues for publication were limited and those for developing English poetry writing as a craft even more so. I learnt alot on my own reading as much as I could (still am!), drawing parallels with Urdu poetry, translating ghazals, examining the ‘weight’ of a verse, exploring sound and rhythm. I think that rooted my writing in subcontinental poetry, its motifs and dynamics even as my experience and expression of it was influenced by Western poetry and approaches.

I think the prickly tension I felt between the two, that was like a burr under my skin, thinking they were two distinct halves in me has given way and melted into a more unified, alloyed poetic identity.

Still getting back into the swing of things. Until next week!