The Pakistan Academy of letters has brought out a special issue of its journal Adabiyat in memory of Munir Niazi. It may be taken as the Academy’s homage to our most dear poet for his brilliant achievements in the field of poetry.

While rummaging through the pages of this volume spread over about 550 pages, I marked out one page which contained a statement by the poet. I thought that I should first listen to the poet before I go through the writings of the long line of the critics, who have tried to make an assessment of the poet’s work.

In reply to a question by Sohail Ahmad Khan, Munir says, ‘I don’t have any poetic theory to offer. All what I have with me is poetry and nothing else. No philosophy, no ideology. I don’t have any such thing to justify what I write. If at all I have any ideology, it is poetry itself.

In reply to another question he says, ‘you ask me as to what inspires me to write. I may tell you that I don’t possess any readymade prescription for inspiration. It just happens to me without any effort on my part. There is no planning, no fixed time for it; poetry just dawns on me, goes deep down and fills the vacuum in me.’

‘How do you take your fame as poet?’ ‘It looks good for the time being. But I have an awareness that it is not my destination. I am destined to go beyond it.

‘A poet is not expected to make a stay and take rest. In that case he will degenerate into the status of a murshad. The poet is destined for a perennial journey with no stopover on the way.’

Munir Niazi has here defined his poetic position in a way that we cannot dare to associate him with any social or political movement or any school of thought.

No epithet indicating his connection with any particular ideology or any philosophy can be attached to his stature of a poet. He is a poet, that is all.

To make such an assertion in our times, a poet needs to have full faith in the independent status of his vocation. He should have courage  enough to challenge the misconceptions of his age.

We are now living in an ideologically-biased and a purpose-ridden age. Arts and literature according to the common belief, should have necessarily some purpose, social, political, or religious, in an overt way.

The writers in general have no wish to revolt against this situation imposed on them by society. So each writer (of course there are honourable exceptions) is seen very keen to be associated with any such cause. Seen in this perspective, Munir Niazi stands aloof, challenging a misconception which has grown into an article of faith in our times.

And it should be deemed as the strength of Munir’s faith in his stand that even Ashfaq Ahmad has paid tribute to him for achieving this status. Ahmad says that ‘Munir is neither a people’s poet, nor a poet of revolution, nor a qasida writer, nor a sarkari poet. He is simply and purely a poet and nothing else.’

Being a pure poet, Munir has within his grasp a creative experience different from those of his contemporaries. This experience can hardly be understood in the terms we employ in case of contemporary poetry. In order to be understood his poetry requires a different angle of vision.

Sohail Ahmad Khan has tried to explain it by saying that ‘Munir’s poetry has the magic to evoke the memories of our childhood and to land us in the paradise deeply linked with this childhood.’

Mohammed Salimur Rehman has tried to explain this magic by saying that Munir’s poetry carries with it a means of bringing news from the realm of the unknown.

And here I would like to quote Shameem Hanafi, who while trying to make a distinction between Munir’s poetic vision and the vision of his contemporaries, says that ‘Munir Niazi has in fact composed a Tilism-i-Hoshruba of his own in the form of poetry’.

Munir’s poetry appears to me an interplay of the known and the unknown. It so often leads us astray in the jungles of primeval times where the known appears to be fading into the unknown.

He feels within himself the vague breathing of these primeval jungles. At times he gives the impression of a terrorised soul. But he says:‘my strength lies in my fear.’ He is justified in saying so.

The vague fears lurking deep down in us as depicted in his verses seem turning into a creative experience. Once turned into a creative experience they become a source of power for the creative soul.