The Margins Asks Seven Poets to Reflect on the Poetry of Partition

At The Margins, an explanation of "one of the bloodiest and largest mass migrations of people in history," Partition, "when in 1947 the British colonial administration with support from the Indian Muslim league split the newly independent nation into West Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), with a Muslim-majority, and India, with a Hindu-majority and significant Sikh and Muslim communities." Following this is a folio of poems from seven poets reflecting on Partition: Adeeba Talukder, Momina Mela, Zia Ather, Sreshtha Sen, Tanzila Ahmed, Faisal Mohyuddin, and Fatimah Asghar. From the intro:

Perhaps the most influential poem to come out of Partition and to memorialize this bloody chapter in history was by the atheist revolutionary Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz: “Subh-e-Azadi” (“Dawn of Independence”), which captures the failed dream of a postcolonial subcontinent amidst the wreckage of colonial violence:

This is not that Dawn for which, ravished with freedom,
we had set out in sheer longing,
so sure that somewhere in its desert the sky harbored
a final haven for the stars, and we would find it.

Find the full feature at AAWW's The Margins.