Dunya hum ko abhi nahi gardaane gi
Aane vaali nasl magar pehchaane gi
(Just now the world does not think us worthy of consideration
But we will be recognized by the future generation)
Ishrat Afreen, born in 1956, moved from Pakistan to India and then to the US, and retired from teaching at the University of Texas. She has her own official website and has been publishing her poems since she was 15. In fact, earlier last year, on 30 April, she reached a unique milestone among her contemporary poets who were born in the 1950s: the golden jubilee of her poetic career, a distinction which is hers alone. Three of her collections have been published, one in the 1980s, Kunj Peele Phoolon Ka (The Grove of Yellow Flowers) and two, more recently, in 2005 and 2017 – Dhoop Apne Hisse Ki (My Share of Sunlight) and Diya Jalaati Shaam (Lamp-lit Evening). All her existing collections of poetry were published as Zard Patton ka Ban (The Forest of Yellow Leaves) in 2017. One can watch her perform her poetry in the public domain. As I write these lines, she is giving final touches to her new poetic work, Parinde Chahchahate Hain (The Birds Are Chirping). Her poems published in Rukhsana Ahmed’s anthology, Beyond Belief: Contemporary Feminist Urdu Poetry (1990), deployed a rawness that consciously gendered the poetic experience.