Glowing tributes were offered to the late poetess Parveen Shakir at a meeting held to mark her contribution to poetry and literature under the aegis of the Oxford University Press (Pakistan) at their bookshop yesterday evening in Karachi.
The main talk on the late poetess was delivered by Dr Fatema Hassan, Shakir’s contemporary and a poetess of national repute.
Recalling her association with the late poetess, Hassan recounted their meeting and subsequent association when she came over to Karachi from the erstwhile East Pakistan in 1974.
Narrating her first impressions of the late poetess, Hassan said, “She was always into books. What endeared her to people was her bold and forthright style which was not there in the litterateurs of her generation. She was greatly influenced by Fehmida Riaz and this was particularly true in case of her collection, titled, Khushboo (fragrance).”
Hassan said that Parveen Shakir had also been greatly influenced by a preceding poetess, Zahida Khatoon Sherwanian, who was very revolutionary and in her work Shikwa, in which she had questioned the contradictory values of society, especially those that precipitated the suppression of women.
