Parveen Shakir: Poet of Women's Love and Longing

Parveen Shakir was born in Karachi on 24 November 1952. She studied English literature and linguistics, taught English, and in 1982 passed the civil service examination and joined the customs service. Her first collection, Khushbu (Fragrance, 1976), made her famous almost overnight and won the Adamjee Award. She received the Pride of Performance in 1990. She died in a car accident in Islamabad on 26 December 1994, at forty-two.

After Khushbu came Sad-barg, Khud-kalami and Inkar; her collected poems were published as Mah-e-Tamam (The Full Moon). She wrote both ghazals and free-verse nazms, in a simple, musical language. Her poems are still under copyright, so we describe rather than quote them here.