Poets from Dhaka have made the city of their birth famous indeed. In their poems, they not only present us with authentic accounts of a bustling city life, but they also seek to capture the beauty lying beyond the mundane. Generally speaking, that’s what our biggest urban poets (Shamsur Rahman, Shaheed Quaderi) have achieved.
But then there is Kaiser Haq (born on December 7, 1950), who has carved out a different itinerary for his journey, capturing in the process a lot more than the beauty and the banality of a city. Instead of being transfixed on the stark contrast between the poor and the rich, he has moved well beyond contemporary city parameters, aiming to dig out its entire history, thus placing the city of his birth at the center of a country’s history and turning his poetry into an asset that belongs to the whole nation, or to the whole of South Asia.
Besides being a poet, he is also an essayist, translator, critic, editor, and academic. In the turbulent days of 1971, he joined the freedom struggle and fought valiantly against the Pakistan occupation army, an experience which has had a lasting effect on his poetry and nonfiction writing. He was a second year undergraduate student at the University of Dhaka back then.
After independence, he’s pursued a teaching career which he continues to this day. Currently he is on LPR from University of Dhaka and working as professor and dean of School of Arts and Humanities (SAH) of University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULab).
Starting Lines (1978) was the first of his seven collections of poetry, and Pariah and Other Poems (Dhaka: Bengal Lights Books 2013) is the most recent. Published in the Streets of Dhaka: collected poems (Dhaka: UPL 2017) is an anthology containing most of his poems. Instead of an overflow of emotions and aspirations, most of his poems carry his signature terseness and witty streaks.
He has also edited two poetry anthologies: Contemporary Indian Poetry (Ohio State University Press 1990)and Padma MeghnaJamuna: Modern Poetry from Bangladesh (Delhi: SAARC Foundation).
His contribution to translating both modern and medieval classics of Bengali poetry and prose into English is indeed solid. Director of Dhaka Translation Center, a wing of Bengal Lights Books, his most notable translations include Selected Poems of Shamsur Rahman (Dhaka: BRAC 1985), Rabindranath Tagore’s Quartet (Heinemann Asian Writers Series, 1993) and Nasreen Jahan’s The Woman Who Flew (Penguin India 2012). His latest work of translation Selected Poems of Shaheed Quaderi (Bengal Lights Books) will be launched at the Dhaka Literary Festival 2018.
To many his towering feat in translation was the retelling of a famous medieval folktale known as Manasa Mangal. His translation of the legends of the snake goddess Manasa, The Triumph of the Snake Goddess (Harvard University Press, 2015) has received rave reviews all over the world. His translation of Mirza Sheikh’s travelogue, The Wonders of Vilayet has also garnered high praise from readers.