Faiz Ahmad Faiz

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Overview

Faiz Ahmad Faiz was an Urdu poet from Punjab who joined the lyric tradition of love poetry to the language of political protest. He wrote of the beloved and of the oppressed in overlapping images, so that a poem could be read as a love poem and a call for justice at once. He was imprisoned for his politics and became known across South Asia and beyond. For learners he is a model of how to speak with courage and craft in public.

Context

Faiz was born in Sialkot in 1911 and lived through colonial rule, Partition and several military governments in Pakistan. He belonged to the Progressive Writers' Movement and was strongly influenced by the classical ghazal tradition of Urdu poetry. The ghazal normally addresses an often ambiguous beloved; Faiz used that ambiguity to carry social and political meaning at a time when direct criticism was risky.