Australian Urdu Poet Aziz Hakeem

Interview with a very distinct Urdu Poet Mr Aziz Hakeem. He has been living in Australia for a long time. As a Poet his 'Takhallus' is Ahsan Aziz . He says there was always a literary and cultural atmosphere and tradition in his family and home. He was about 9 or 10 when he was fascinated by the chemistry of language and imagination, and began tentatively to write poetry. The turning-point arrived when he showed his first complete ghazal to Faiz Ahmed Faiz who had come to see his uncle, Maulana Abdul Ghafoor. Faiz generously praised his ghazal, and for a young person just out of school, it was most encouraging to hear it from the greatest living poet in Urdu. Not long after his encounter with Faiz, he began publishing his ghazals in respectable journals like Adabe Latif, Afkar, Auraq, Saheefa, Naya Daur, Seep, Shair, etc

/p>His first collection of ghazals is 'Ek Rishta-e-Gham. The second collection is 'Safar Kaisay Kaisay' Here is a quotation from distinguished poet Munir Niazi who wrote the foreword for his second book: "Ahsan Aziz's journey explores both the inner and outer worlds, and his reader keeps discovering the footsteps in both these worlds. this is what gives 'Safar Kaisay Kaisay' the status of a milestone in the journey of the Urdu ghazal",