Perveen Shakir pioneered use of feminism in poetry

Islamabad

The 49th birth anniversary of renowned poetess Parveen Shakir was observed here Tuesday.

Parveen Shakir was awarded one of Pakistan’s highest honours, the Pride of Performance, for her outstanding contribution to literature. The Delhi Recorder has stated that Shakir “has given the most beautiful female touch to Urdu poetry.”

Parveen Shakir was born on November 24, 1952 in Karachi. On December 26, 1994, on her way to work, her car collided with a truck and the world of modern Urdu poetry lost one of its brightest stars.

She was highly educated, with two master’s degrees, one in English Literature and one in Linguistics. She also held a PhD and another master’s degree in Bank Administration. She was a teacher for nine years before she joined the Civil Service and worked in the Customs Department. In 1986, she was appointed the second secretary CBR in Islamabad.

Parveen started writing at an early age, initially under the pen name of Beena. A number of her poetry books have been published. In chronological order, they are ‘Khushboo’ (1976), ‘Sad-barg’ (1980), ‘Khud-kalaami’ (1990), ‘Inkaar’ (1990) and ‘Maah-e-Tamaam’ (1994). Her first book, ‘Khushboo’, won the Adamjee Award. Later, she was awarded the Pride of Performance award, which is the highest award given by the Pakistani government.

Shakir employed mainly two forms of poetry in her work, one being the prevalent ‘ghazal’ and the other being free verse. The most prominent themes in Shakir’s poetry are love, feminism and social stigmas, though she occasionally wrote on other topics as well. Her work was often based on romanticism, exploring the concepts of love, beauty and their contradictions, and heavily integrated the use of metaphors, similes and personifications.

Arguably, Shakir can be termed the first poetess to use the word ‘larki’ (girl) in her works - the male-dominated Urdu poetry scene seldom employs that word and uses masculine syntax when talking about the ‘lover’. Similarly, she often made use of the Urdu first person feminine pronoun in her verses, which, though extremely common in prose, was rarely used in poetry, even by female poetesses before her.

Literary figure Iftikhar Arif has praised Shakir for impressing “the young lot through her thematic variety and realistic poetry,” for adding “a new dimension to the traditional theme of love by giving expression to her emotions in a simple and pellucid style,” and using a “variety of words to convey different thoughts with varying intensities.”