Adil Najam
Aitizaz Ahsan, flaws and all, has become the voice of the moment. The voice of a generation. This voice, which has become my voice and, maybe, yours speaks more passionately in the idiom of poetry than in the idiom of prose. It speaks most passionately in this poem - Kal, Aaj and Kal - [...]

English translation is given at the end.
Owais Mughal
Following ‘azad’ poem is by one of my favourite writers, Shafiq-ur-Rehman and it comes from his book ‘lehreN’. The poem is actually a satire on modern day poets who write ‘azad’ Urdu poem by using all the ‘azadi’ they can get. The poem describes a situation of fighting [...]

Asma Mirza
sadd rang meri mauj hay, main tab’ey rawaa’n hoon
This verse always crosses my mind whenever the name of Ibn-e-Insha is mentioned around. A poet, columnist, humorist, and travelogue writer loved for past five decades by Urdu language readers around the globe.

I still remember the first time I got introduced to Insha Ji’s witty writings. [...]

Aadil Shah
Abdur-Rehman (1650 – 1715 A.D) widely known as Rehman Baba was a great Pushtu Sufi poet who is regarded as the most read and quoted Pushtu poet of the larger belt of Afghanistan and the North Western Frontier Province of Pakistan. There isn’t much known about his life due to the lack of [...]

Darwaish
Everyone these days seems to be talking about the elections, the tragic death of Benazir Bhutto and its impact on federation of Pakistan, the ever high anti Pakistan and anti Army sentiment in Sindh, Balochistan and FATA. The ordinary Pakistanis, middle and lower class in particular, are faced with a long list of other serious [...]

Mast Qalandar
Of all the folk tales of Punjab, Waris Shah’s Heer is the most widely read, recited (actually, sung), commented upon and quoted love story. People have even done Ph.Ds on it. It is a very long poem, written in the Punjabi baint meter, comprising of 630 odd stanzas of 6 to 12 or more [...]