ver the decades, Pakistani-English poetry has been overshadowed by the surging popularity of fiction from the country. Superlative poets have struggled to garner attention from international publishers. This has restrained their ability to carve a niche for themselves on the global footing. On the local front, too, the readership for poetry in English has diminished considerably and publishing companies are quick to dismiss poetry collections as unfeasible business ventures. Be that as it may, Pakistani-English poetry has survived all challenges and has been kept alive predominantly through the sincere and spirited endeavours of a few poets, aficionados and literary groups. What’s more, copious Pakistani-English poetry has left a deep imprint on the hearts and minds of readers.

Hima Raza (1975-2003) was among the illustrious set of Pakistani-English poets to whom this victory can be attributed. Born in Lahore, Raza studied postcolonial literature at the University of New South Wales and completed her MPhil at the University of Sussex in the UK. She also taught at the Lahore University of Management Sciences and the Beaconhouse National University. At the age of 27, she died a few days after being injured in a hit-and-run accident.

Raza is best known for her two collections of poems, Memory Stains (2000) and Left-Hand-Speak (2002). Her poems were lauded for their undeniable originality and stood out as lively experiments with language, shapes, word art and rhythms. In her obituary for Wasafiri, Raza’s friend Aamer Hussein wrote that her poems carry the “glancing echo of the Urdu language”.

Left-Hand-Speak is arguably the doorway to Raza’s oeuvre and is, as Hussein wrote in his tribute to the late poet, her “literary memorial.” In a series of bilingual poems that use the Arabic and Roman scripts for verses penned in Urdu and English, Raza explores her alienation in the West and the complex negotiations straddling two cultures and languages.

The poems in her final collection are a welcome testament to the tale of two languages that informed her literary imagination and poetic voice. The conflict between English and Urdu is a common thread that runs through Left-Hand-Speak. In the titular poem, which reflects the spectre of the languages we abandon for English, Raza portrays this dichotomy in the opening verse:

“Left-hand-speak moves

in menacing tones,/

like the sound of a distant

waterfall calling you.”

The “distant waterfall” reflects the infinite yet unattainable beauty of Urdu. This beauty comes at a steep price as it “moves in menacing tones,” bringing peril or an uneasy calm in its wake. The poem is also laced with the history of an unforgotten – and somewhat eternal – imperial legacy. Raza writes:

“In my ancestors’ eyes,/

who forgot respect and

responsibility/

for a place called the

Commonwealth,/

telling us it would be ok if we tried

hard enough/

to be like someone else/

if we learnt how to take high tea/

and work our way through a

five-course meal,/

using the appropriate cutlery./

‘For your own good’, they said —/

they lied.”

Later in the poem, Raza examines how Urdu came to “a strange rescue” at a time when the West spread the foul stench of the War on Terror to other countries. Be that as it may, her exploration of Urdu is tantamount to a “shadow [she must] chase” and “a ghost she must carry.”

Throughout the collection, Raza invokes the phantom of a language that is etched within her consciousness. Us In Two Tones carries the emotional fervour of a note written to an estranged partner with whom there is no hope for reconciliation. In the midst of the poem, Raza shifts effortlessly from English in the Roman script to Urdu in the Arabic script. To the uninitiated Western reader, the decision to alter the script might appear to be an introduction to some hieroglyphs that need to be deciphered. However, bilingual readers may not view this as a secret code that needs to be cracked. Instead, many of them may find themselves at the cusp of discovering a new vein of truth. The Urdu verses engage intertextually with the legend of Laila Majnun, where the latter attempts to regain his love by becoming one with her. Interestingly, the narrator appears to adopt a gentler tone in the Urdu verses. In the English verses, the female narrator’s tone is seemingly accusatory. Resigned to their fate as lovers who are destined to part ways, she chides her lost love for his “refusal to understand” the language of the heart.

A similar technique is adopted in In Translation – the final poem in Left-Hand-Speak. The poem invokes the spectre of the mother tongue and addresses the poet’s condition as a language-less being who “writes the words of other skins.” One of the two pages of the poem is written in Urdu. The first line of the Urdu verses reflects the terrors and ambiguity of searching for a language that the poet finds herself at ease in.

Apart from these bilingual poems, Raza has written an array of verses in Left-Hand-Speak that explore the dismal consequences of colonialism, gender confrontations, racial politics and love. At no point does she compromise on inventiveness and poetic grace by pursuing political propaganda. Raza’s poetry ought to be savoured for its thematic depth and experimentations with structure.

The writer is a freelance journalist and the author of Typically Tanya