Khud Kalaami / خود کلامی

by Parveen Shakir

Genres: Poetry

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Parveen Shakir was an Urdu poet, teacher and a civil servant of the Government of Pakistan.

Parveen started writing at an early age and published her first volume of poetry, Khushbu [Fragrance], in 1976 to great acclaim. She subsequently published other volumes of poetry; all well-received.

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 female poet 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 poets, before her.

On 26 December 1994, Shakir's car collided with a bus while she was on her way to work in Islamabad. The accident resulted in her death, a great loss to the Urdu poetry world. The road on which the accident took place is named after her.

Reviews

[Omama. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was just an average collection of love poems and prose. The poetry, which specifically point out the love for a man, where he is being called out for his transgressions and for practicing deception in love; doesn’t attract me much, and the first half of this collection represents that. Nonetheless, I read this one for Parveen Shakir, and liked some of the couplets.

عشق میں بھی مرنا اتنا آسان نہیں
ذات کو رد کرنا اتنا آسان نہیں

دل کا کیا ہے وہ تو چاہے گا مسلسل ملنا
وہ ستم گر بھی مگر سوچے کسی پل ملنا

[W · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't find it as interesting as Khushboo,another collection of Parveen Shakir's poetry.

[Wasiq Akram · Rating 5 out of 5]

پروین شاکر کے الفاظ, خواہ آپ جہاں بھی ہوں, آپ کو سرما کی سنہری مگر اداس دھوپ میں اپنے جزبات کے کنارے لے جانے پر مجبور کر دیتے ہیں.

[Umair Khan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's very fascinating and explores isolated aspects with the simplistic way of putting words in a row where you easily find your synopsis and computation of the lines of poetry and also the short type of storyline with the same equivalent layer.

[Riaz Ujjan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perveen Shakir is widely read poet of ghazals, nazams & azad nazam in Urdu. She died in a car crash at her prime. Although contains few beatiful ghazals & nazams, this book is not as good as her other books.

[Syed Raza Mehdi · Rating 5 out of 5]

لیکن وقت کا وحشی ناچ
کسی مقام نہیں رکتا
رقص کی لے ہر لمحہ تیز ہوئی جاتی ہے
یا تو میں کچھ اور ہوں
یا پھر
یہ میرا سیارہ نہیں ہے !

[Abdul Rafay · Rating 4 out of 5]

One day I randomly went to my university's library to escape the nonstop grind of doing nothing and sitting idle in my block as the professors were not serious about their student's grades henceforth they decided to not show up at all in the second semester. As I was searching through the shelves, I came across this poetry collection by Parveen Shakir. I didn't even make any effort to go to the reading table and dropped myself on the floor in front of that shelf and started reading it. With each turn, I fell in love with the theme and subject of the collection and found it way better than Khushbu / خوشبو.

[Asad]

crazy to read