Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Mar 21: Giving a national platform to Urdu poets and writers of Jammu, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, organized a ‘Sheri Nashisht’- poetic assembly, in which selected local poets shared stage with well known poets from Delhi, Aligarh and Karnataka, at the K L Saigal Hall here today.
The invited national personalities included Khalil Mamoon, renowned poet and scholar and former president of Karnataka Urdu Academy, Tabish Mehdi, senior poet from Delhi and Dr Rashid Anwar Rashid, poet and professor at Aligarh Muslim University.
Unlike the run of the mill ‘mushairas’ where poets recite poetry after gauzing the mood and standard of the audience, today program was an intimate ‘ baithak’ in which invited poets presented their poetry as a literary exercise in both form and content.
Presided by local celebrity poet Pritpal Singh Betab, the program started with Deepak Aarsi who read his poem ‘faqir-e-ishaq bhi apni shaan rakhta hai, dar-e-khasta se baahar hi khare sultan rakhta hai\mere undar na jane kaun hai behtar muzh se, jo apni karni se mujhai hairaan rakhta hai’.
Young and talented Khalid Karar impressed with poems from his anthology ‘Varood’ – ‘aise dubka hoon hujra-e-jan mein, jaise ki nikla to mara jaoon ga’. Rashid Anwar Rashid, young firebrand poet from Aligarh, mirroring the fast changed world said, ‘jindagi lout aana jaldi shaam ko, ab tu pehle ki tarah bachchi nahin rahi\ khairiyat se hain gaon ke sab log, aisi chitthi ab milti nahin’. Tabish Mehdi, Mushtaq Sadaf, Ahmad Sanash and Balraj Bakshi also read their poems and made an impact on audience.
Pritpal, Singh Betab, well known poet of the sub-continent who received applause for his poems, speaking in his address thanked Sahitya Akademi for organizing such a program in Jammu.
Today’s program conducted by Mushtaq Sadaf, Program Officer, Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi was attended by number of poets and writers of different languages, students and members of civil society.
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