IIC DIAMOND JUBILEE POETRY READINGS – CULTURE AND CREATIVITY – LEGACY AND CHANGE

A YEAR OF POETRY AT IIC
Conceptualised by Gitanjali Surendran

Shahr aur Shaayari: The City in Urdu and Indo-Persian Poetry
An evening of readings, recitations, discussions, and appreciation of a wide range of Urdu and Indo-Persian poetry by the greatest as well as some contemporary poets on the city – cultures of Hindustan – of Delhi, Lucknow, Banaras, Hyderabad and elsewhere. Spanning from the shahr-ashob or the ‘lament or tumult of the city’ traditions to monothematic qat’as, and long poems such as the masnavi on Banaras by Mirza Ghalib

Panelists: Dr. Saif Mahmood, Advocate and author of Beloved Delhi: A Mughal City and Her Greatest Poets; Dr. Swapna Liddle, historian, and author of Connaught Place and the Making of New Delhi, Chandni Chowk: The Mughal City of Old Delhi, and Delhi: 14 Historic Walks; Dr. Maaz Bin Bilal, Associate Professor of Literary Studies, Jindal University and author of Ghazalnama: Poems from Delhi, Belfast, and Urdu; and translator of Mirza Ghalib’s Temple Lamp: Verses on Banaras; and Dr. Mohammad Sayeed, Co-Founder Chiragh-e-Dilli: Writing a City, Co-Curator, Smell Assembly: An Exhibition of Smells of Delhi, and Ethnographer of Delhi