A unique poetic voice

Rawalpindi : Azhar Ghouri’s poetry collection Ghair Mashroot Mohabbat has its roots in existentialist blues, and a sense of non-conformity towards conventional morality. He is an advocate of unconditional love.

An optimistic poet, devoted to his social and political responsibilities, his inspiration ranges across a new viewpoint of love, closeness to people, language ingenuity, far-reaching ideas, the longing for an improved life, and a changed social order.

Tales of love have been an enduring theme for all poets. Poets take love as a symbol of bleeding wounds of the soul. However, the poet with a richness of thought and ample poetic skills, sensitivity and passion, the novelty of thought, and poetic expression, campaigns for unqualified love.

Azhar Ghouri’s poetry is years ahead of his time in subject matter and the concerned tone he adapted. It talks about the modern world, as it has existed over the last hundreds of years, capitalist and unjust. Azhar hopes for a revolution through which unconditional love can take the world toward peace and prosperity.

What is most fascinating to me, personally, is his ability to show his readers the inherent potential in the language itself. His poems usually utilize an unassuming diction devoid of any ambiguity. The clarity of his voice hits the reader like a roll of thunder. His defiance for establishments, literary, cultural, or of the state, has his imprint on many a page of his oeuvre. He possesses an uncanny ability to reach into the depths of human lives with astute sensitivity. He would then come out of it astonishingly composed, ready to write about it in an elegant manner.

The sharpness of his tone, most notably his pieces on various topics, is full of poise and candor. Unlike many poets, any other towering figure does not impress him. He writes as freely as he had ever wanted to.

Ghair Mashroot Mohabbat appears to contain diverse forms of poetry, rhymed and free verse, prose poems, Ghazals, Nazms saturated with feelings, emotions, and haunting memories. Love-bitten melancholy poetry is not the poet’s target.

His scintillating ability to interlace heavier themes with his sparkling wisdom is quite evident. The collection emerges as a dazzling kaleidoscope of our times. The poems deal with issues relevant to our local and global contexts with an outstanding blending of romance and reality.

In this volume of poetry, Azhar Ghouri has extended his poetic shadow on every topic and he has consummated the task quite wonderfully. His free verse and prose poems are the defining poetic invention of modernity. Ghair Mashroot Mohabbat shows the stature of the prose poem. Bearing a unique poetic voice, Azhar Ghouri’s style sets him apart from his predecessors and contemporaries. Despite his familiarity with the poetic traditions, his poems have always been free of the syrupy, overemotional language of the disheartened romantic.