Urdu poetry has several forms (borrowed from Persian poetry) e.g. ghazal, qasida, marsiya, rubai, etc The most popular of these is the ghazal, and I shall only discuss that here.

In Urdu literature, traditionally two concepts have remained dominant with regards to where creativity emanates from. The first is amad (spontaneity) and second is awrad (contrived).For a long ...

Progressive poets of the mid-1930s appeared to have been the first to gift gender-identity to the ever elusive beloved of classic Urdu poetry. What was a free floating metaphor was now placed in ...

In Urdu poetry the image of Lahore as a city of enchantment began appearing a bit later. Lahore emerged as a new metropolitan centre of Urdu poetry in the last quarter of 19th century.

That 300,000 people celebrated Urdu verse during a three-day festival was testament to the peculiar reality of the language in India. The inaugural day of the Urdu poetry festival Jashn-e-Rekhta ...

While many readers of Urdu poetry are familiar with the archetypal romance between the bulbul (nightingale) and the gul (rose or flower), the image of trees in this metaphorical garden has also ...

With time differences have grown to the point that we can say that Urdu poetry in Pakistan is completely different from that in India,” he said. Being the purist that he is, ...