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Mon 04 Apr 2009The Urdu poetry that makes connections
Renowned Pakistani singer Tina Sani is coming to Ireland this week, and far from being esoteric, her chosen art form, the ‘ghazal’, has a bang-up-to-date message, she tells ARMINTA WALLACE.
WHAT do Yeats and the national poet of Pakistan, Muhammad Iqbal, have in common? Well, they inhabited more or less the same corner of history (Yeats lived from 1865 to 1939, Iqbal from 1877 to 1938) and they were both interested in questions of individual and national identity, while their own identities were forged at the edges of the British empire. As poets, they were both masters of traditional literary forms, as opposed to formal innovators. They both had a mystical streak.
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