Agha Shahid Ali

Agha Shahid Ali Qizilbash (4 February 1949 – 8 December 2001) was an Indian-American poet who immigrated to the United States and became affiliated with the literary movement known as New Formalism in American poetry. His collections include A Walk Through the Yellow Pages, The Half-Inch Himalayas, A Nostalgist's Map of America, The Country Without a Post Office, and Rooms Are Never Finished, the latter a finalist for the National Book Award in 2001.

The University of Utah Press awards the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize annually in memory of this "celebrated poet and beloved teacher."

Early life and education
Agha Shahid Ali was born on February 4, 1949, in New Delhi in the Union of India, into an illustrious Qizilbashi Agha family from Srinagar, Kashmir, tracing their roots back to Kandahar, Afghanistan. He grew up in India's Kashmir Valley, and left for the United States in 1976. Shahid's father Agha Ashraf Ali was a renowned educationist. His grandmother Begum Zaffar Ali was the first woman matriculate of Kashmir. Shahid was educated at the Burn Hall School, later University of Kashmir and Hindu College, University of Delhi. He earned a PhD in English from Pennsylvania State University in 1984, and an M.F.A. from the University of Arizona in 1985. He held teaching positions at nine universities and colleges in India and the United States.

Shahid was born a Shia Muslim, but his upbringing was secular. Shahid and his brother Iqbal both studied at an Irish Catholic parochial school and, in an interview, he recalled that: "There was never a hint of any kind of parochialism in the home."

Literary work
Ali expressed his love and concern for his people in In Memory of Begum Akhtar and The Country Without a Post Office, which was written with the Kashmir conflict as a backdrop. He was a translator of Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz (The Rebel's Silhouette; Selected Poems), and editor for the Middle East and Central Asia segment of Jeffery Paine's Poetry of Our World. He also compiled the volume Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English. His last book was Call Me Ishmael Tonight, a collection of English ghazals, and his poems are featured in American Alphabets: 25 Contemporary Poets (2006) and other anthologies.

Ali taught at the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at University of Massachusetts Amherst, at the MFA Writing Seminars at Bennington College as well as at creative writing programs at SUNY-Binghamton, University of Utah, Baruch College, Warren Wilson College, Hamilton College and New York University.

J&K authorities have removed three poems – "Postcard from Kashmir", "In Arabic" and "The Last Saffron" from the curriculum of University of Kashmir and two poems, "I see Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight" and "Call me Ishmael Tonight" from the Cluster University. Education advisors in Delhi/Srinagar have maintained that such "Resistance Literature" sustains "secessionist mindset, aspiration & narrative" among students.

Personal life and death
Ali never married. He was gay. He died of brain cancer in December 2001 and was buried in Northampton, Massachusetts, in the vicinity of Amherst, a town sacred to his beloved poet Emily Dickinson.

Poetry

 * Bone Sculpture (1972),
 * In Memory of Begum Akhtar and Other Poems (1979),
 * The Half-Inch Himalayas (1987),
 * A Walk Through the Yellow Pages (1987),
 * A Nostalgist's Map of America (1991),
 * The Beloved Witness: Selected Poems (1992),
 * The Country Without a Post Office (1997),
 * Rooms Are Never Finished (2001),
 * Call Me Ishmael Tonight: A Book of Ghazals (2003).

Translations and edited volumes

 * Translator, The Rebel's Silhouette: Selected Poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1992),
 * Editor, Ravishing Disunities: Real Ghazals in English (2000).

Influences
Ali was deeply moved by the music of Begum Akhtar. The two had met through a friend of Akhtar's when Ali was a teenager and her music became a lasting presence in his life. Features of her ghazal rendition—such as wit, wordplay and nakhra (affectation)—were present in Ali's poetry as well. However, Amitav Ghosh suspects that the strongest connection between the two rose from the idea that "sorrow has no finer mask than a studied lightness of manner"—traces of which were seen in Ali's and Akhtar's demeanor in their respective lives.

Awards

 * Pushcart Prize
 * Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996
 * Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Fellowship
 * Ingram-Merrill Foundation Fellowship
 * New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship