🕯️🕯️🕯️

In 1991, Rasheed Khan put together the aaKHri mushaira text for the Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu (Hind). In his preface, he takes the reader behind the scenes, dwelling upon and explicating in simple words, Farhatullah Baig’s motivations and cues to depict a royal mushaira in all its magnificent detail.

His work on Urdu orthography "Urdu Imla" discouraged the joining of single- or two-syllable words, for separate words: ‘ke liye’, ‘is liye’, ‘un ka’. Compound words, he standardized to writing separately, whereas earlier there was no convention at all. Eg: ‘mai-KHana’, ‘dil-kashi’, ‘dast-varzi’.

but this is good.

Rasheed Hasan Khan broadened the scope of Urdu literary research to include language and orthography; his innovative approach shifted the paradigm of Urdu orthography significantly, bringing Urdu closer to the modern reader. Read the full paper in IIC Quarterly aws-static.iicdelhi.in/s3fs-public/...

love poems ❤️

Half the job of breaking into writing is figuring out how to break into writing. Just writing isn't enough. There is no one way in. There are hundreds. And figuring out which way will work best for you and your work is the trick of it. Every one of us has a very different story about how we did it.

Read diverse books every month.
Read diverse books every month.
Read diverse books every month.
Read diverse books every month.
Read diverse books every month.
Read diverse books every month.
Read diverse books every month.
#BookSky #BlackBookSky

A great review by Irena Akbar...
open.substack.com/pub/irenaakb...

This poem: it's by Matthew Buckley Smith, from his book Midlife -

‘The Peace of Wild Things’ - Wendell Berry (2018)

NEW POEM #202: "But We Did Read the Darkness" by Jessica Coles (@prairievixen.bsky.social)

"It predicted questions: What / is language when we look at the sky? / A flock of swallows lacing depths of blue with a new / form of divination"

stonecirclereview.com/but-we-did-r...

#Poem #Poetry #NewPoem

The book now available internationally. Order your copy from:
www.amazon.com/Delhis-Last-...

Lucknow’s poet Amirullah Tasleem wrote

javaani se zyaada vaqt-e piirii josh hotaa hai
bhaDaktaa hai charaaG-e sub.h jab KHaamosh hotaa hai”

which translates as
Old age has more passion than the years of youth bygone
The night lamp flares with brilliance in the hush of dawn.

"The literature of imagination, even when tragic, is reassuring, not necessarily in the sense of offering nostalgic comfort, but because it offers a world large enough to contain alternatives and therefore offers hope."

—"The Critics, the Monsters, and the Fantasists"

Lucille Clifton, always.

naam-e nek-e raftgaaN zaa’ye makuun
taa ba-maanad naam-e nekat barqaraar

Forget not the good deeds of people of the past
So that you are remembered for your good deeds in the future.

Despite being smack dab in the middle of the holiday interregnum, Stone Circle, as always, remains open for submissions. No fee, no cover letter needed, full details here: stonecirclereview.com/submissions-...

shukriya!

Baig’s mushaira is the portrait of a #Delhi and a way of life that now solely exists in the collective memory of ‘Dehli-wallahs’. It was a powerful urge to record the city’s older face in photographic detail.

Read my translation of the urdu classic "Dehli ki aakhri shama"