Kaiser Haq’s Reminiscence Poems:

Bangladesh’s leading Anglophone poet Kaiser Haq is disenchanted with the ontology of history in its manifestations both as a site of contestations and miseries and as a potential tool serving the successive ruling class agenda. A veritable witness to the formative phases of the country’s overall de...

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Main Author: Kazi Shahidul Islam
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: ULAB Press 2024-12-01
Series:Crossings
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.ulab.edu.bd/index.php/crossings/article/view/567
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author Kazi Shahidul Islam
author_facet Kazi Shahidul Islam
author_sort Kazi Shahidul Islam
collection DOAJ
description Bangladesh’s leading Anglophone poet Kaiser Haq is disenchanted with the ontology of history in its manifestations both as a site of contestations and miseries and as a potential tool serving the successive ruling class agenda. A veritable witness to the formative phases of the country’s overall development and, more importantly, a 1971 war veteran, he has formulated a poetics that engages less with the simplistic representations of history than with personal memory and subjectivity but that still opens windows into the historical timeline parallel to his maturation as an individual and, particularly, as an Anglophone poet. In an attempt to illustrate the inherent dialectic between memory and history in Haq’s poetry, this paper analyzes his lately composed reminiscence poems with reference to his prose pieces and interviews. It shows how the septuagenarian poet, through these poems, situates himself in the country’s evolving socio-cultural and politico-economic reality since the post-Partition times. Haq’s turn to memory is discernible in the correlation between his disillusionment about the state of affairs unfolding along the post-ideological axis and his late-life moral reflections on life. A corollary of this research is that these poems offer a retroactive understanding of Haq’s poetry within Bangladesh’s literary history.
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spelling doaj-art-b1beb19f1d894b6f8b6b26a7d14c8c452025-01-09T13:34:58ZengULAB PressCrossings2071-11072958-31792024-12-0115110.59817/cjes.v15i1.567Kaiser Haq’s Reminiscence Poems:Kazi Shahidul Islam0Bangladesh Army International University of Science and Technology Bangladesh’s leading Anglophone poet Kaiser Haq is disenchanted with the ontology of history in its manifestations both as a site of contestations and miseries and as a potential tool serving the successive ruling class agenda. A veritable witness to the formative phases of the country’s overall development and, more importantly, a 1971 war veteran, he has formulated a poetics that engages less with the simplistic representations of history than with personal memory and subjectivity but that still opens windows into the historical timeline parallel to his maturation as an individual and, particularly, as an Anglophone poet. In an attempt to illustrate the inherent dialectic between memory and history in Haq’s poetry, this paper analyzes his lately composed reminiscence poems with reference to his prose pieces and interviews. It shows how the septuagenarian poet, through these poems, situates himself in the country’s evolving socio-cultural and politico-economic reality since the post-Partition times. Haq’s turn to memory is discernible in the correlation between his disillusionment about the state of affairs unfolding along the post-ideological axis and his late-life moral reflections on life. A corollary of this research is that these poems offer a retroactive understanding of Haq’s poetry within Bangladesh’s literary history. https://journals.ulab.edu.bd/index.php/crossings/article/view/567dialectic between memory and historyreminiscence poemsBangladesh’s historyKaiser Haq
spellingShingle Kazi Shahidul Islam
Kaiser Haq’s Reminiscence Poems:
Crossings
dialectic between memory and history
reminiscence poems
Bangladesh’s history
Kaiser Haq
title Kaiser Haq’s Reminiscence Poems:
title_full Kaiser Haq’s Reminiscence Poems:
title_fullStr Kaiser Haq’s Reminiscence Poems:
title_full_unstemmed Kaiser Haq’s Reminiscence Poems:
title_short Kaiser Haq’s Reminiscence Poems:
title_sort kaiser haq s reminiscence poems
topic dialectic between memory and history
reminiscence poems
Bangladesh’s history
Kaiser Haq
url https://journals.ulab.edu.bd/index.php/crossings/article/view/567
work_keys_str_mv AT kazishahidulislam kaiserhaqsreminiscencepoems