100 Poems from Bangladesh

Anthology of 25 contemporary Bangla poets:

SHAMSUR RAHMAN
ALAUDDIN AL AZAD
SYED SHAMSUL HUQ
AL MAHMUD
FAZAL SHAHABUDDIN
SHAHEED QUADRI
SIKDER AMINUL HUQUE
HAYAT SAIF
RAFIQ AZAD
ASAD CHOWDHURY
AL MUJAHEEDY
MAHADEV SAHA
RABIUL HUSAIN
NIRMALENDU GOON
ABUL HASAN
HABIBULLAH SIRAJEE
MOHAMMAD NURUL HUDA
JAHIDUL HUQ
ABID AZAD
NASIR AHMED
JAHANGIR FEROZE
MUHAMMAD SAMAD
KAMAL CHOWDHURY
TARIK SUJAT
AMINUR RAHMAN

The modern Bangla poetry began with poet Michael Madhusudan Dutta who was born in Bangladesh. However, the main stream of Bangla poetry surfaces with Nobel laureate Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. He has created an enormous world of creativity in poetry as well as stories, novels, prose, art and memorable songs. The people of West Bengal of India and Bangladesh are still following the paths of creativity in line with his works. Another great poet of Bangla literature was Kazi Nazrul Islam, who has also left behind a treasure of creativity in the field of writing poetry, prose, novels, short stories and memorable songs. After them five great poets have evolved in the thirties. These poets were Jibanananda Das, Shudhindranath Dutta, Buddhadev Bose, Vishnu Dey and Amiya Chakkravarty. Each of them created and established their own different style and their specific literary world. The main contribution they made was to bring foreign literature into the country by translating into Bangla particularly European literature. Among those five poets Jibanananda Das opened a new door of modern poetry depicting nature. Jibanananda Das was arguably the most important Bengali poet after Rabindranath Tagore, undoubtedly one of the leading modern poets of Bengal, and certainly one of the greatest Bengali poets of all times. Nevertheless, he is a poet who is hardly known outside the West Bengal and Bangladesh.

Poet Jasimuddin and Poet Farruque Ahmed had created a different dimension in modern Bangla poetry. Poet Jasimuddin had taken the theme from his native land, on the other hand, poet Farruque Ahmed embraced the Islamic heritage as a subject in his poetry.

Poets of the fifties of Bangladesh introduced elements of modernity as conceived in the West in Bangla poetry in Bangladesh. It is through the masterly rendering of the French poet Baudelaire’s poetry in Bangla by Buddhadev Bose that Bangladeshi poets of fifties have been venured into the realm of modern European poetry. They are also profoundly influenced by the works of the German poet Rilke, the English poets W B Yeats and T S Eliot, without compromising their own originality and individual characteristics.

Bangla poetry has been nurtured more in Bangladesh than in West Bengal of India. This is because their first language being Bangla and the valiant Bangalees sacrificed their lives for their mother tongue during the language movement in 1952. The commemoration of 21st February as the Bangla Language Day is one of the most solemn and honourable occasions in Bangladesh. The liberation war in 1971, where three million people gave their lives for the country, was the most significant period for Bangla literature. The new literature with new voices from a newly emerged country flourished only from then on. New Bangla poetry is moving forward along with its traditionalism and modernism although many have practiced post modernism styles.

In this anthology only twenty five contemporary poets are represented with 100 poems. A good number of poets could not be included mainly due to non-availability of proper translations. Hopefully, in the next edition we will try to include them.

We are indebted to the literary scholars Dr Peter Horn and Dr Anette Horn who edited this book in their busy schedule. We are also grateful to Poet Tobias Burghardt and Poet Jona Burghardt to help us publish this anthology in Stuttgart, Germany.