Description
Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. Winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize. SHAHR-E-JAANAAN sets out to recreate the universe of Urdu and Persian poetic tradition, its tropes both lenses and mirrors for the speaker's reality. As she maps her romances onto legends, directing their characters perform her own tragedy, their fantastical metaphors easily lend themselves to her fluctuating mental state. Cycling between delirious grandeur and wretched despair, she is torn between two selves—the pitiable lover continually rejected, and the cruel, unattainable beloved comparable in her exaltation to a god. SHAHR-E-JAANAAN explores, interrogates, and distorts these dichotomies and their symbolism, calling into question the forces that elevate some to divinity even as they damn others to injustice and oppression.
Author Bio
Adeeba Shahid Talukder is a Pakistani American poet, singer, and translator of Urdu and Persian poetry. She is the author of What Is Not Beautiful (Glass Poetry Press, 2018) and her book SHAHR-E-JAANAAN: THE CITY OF THE BELOVED (Tupelo Press, 2020), is a winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize. Her poetry has appeared in Poem-A-Day, Gulf Coast, Meridian, The Margins, and elsewhere. A Best of the Net finalist and a Pushcart nominee, Adeeba holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan and is the recipient of an Emerging Poets Fellowship from Poets House.
Author City: WEEHAWKEN, NJ USA