Sofiul Azam

Sofiul Azam Poems

At the time of the sun's spitting saffron out in the sky,
my life turned into a dazzling Gorgon and smiled.

The Gorgon with her snaky hair and tempting eyes
...

for Sonja Broderick

'...the nameless pain from which one feels there can be no way out,
and one knows despair is absolute.'
...

for my father

The King saw his chiefs stand like the deaf
(brave sepoys stirred blood in their veins,
...

for Geoffrey Hill

1.
...

(for Monira Qais)

I had just slipped straight from my mother’s womb
into this house where rumours breed like spawn,
...

1
Shadows fell on indispensable hopes and grace.
All of our inherited clemency cowered;
and the currency of hopes was almost over,
...

"... to be alone. Because it's not your enemies who condemn you to solitude, it's your friends." - from The Joke by Milan Kundera

Everyday people say it's my heart
that arches over life like a bridge
...

1. To the Apostle of Killing Degeneration

Thunderlight had startled your eyes like an ape's,
and the ministers you ushered into a dungeon
...

“Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.” – W. Shakespeare

1.
...

After school, I used to climb at home
the one and only custard apple tree;
(our house was lonelier all day
...

1.

Poets my ancestors in Charyapada
talked a dialect that I myself don't know;
...

At every sunset
when cars in the metropolis
run -
...

1.

I'm afraid fears often creep into you like splinters
as you hear him once again - drunk, bumping
...

(for Moshref Jahan)

After talks of how she became
a mother at last, ever smiling since then
...

for Babitha Marina Justine

I say Smile even though I know the art you are sacrificing your life for can't be used as a shield against gunfire in battle-fields of invaded lands or as a shell-proof bunker the kind you saw in war documentaries across the world or even as the last hand raised up against the Capitalist invasion into the old brain. I know all the raised hands are falling like a tower and I look at the sunny side of the fact that you would delight in sending missiles of hope one after another into the ruins running thick over centuries. You may harbour the scenes of flesh and skulls strewn on every path you take but I request you all, 'Please don't, don't ever forget to smile for a single second.'
...

1.

It's raining, once again like before, in torrents.
I remember you as much in my dreams
...

I'm afraid promises burst as a child's balloons
on barbed-wires, not that smooth like bubbles
do on Grandpa's backyard mud-pool. Nothing's
...

Genies in Arabian Nights serve our curiosities,
and the monsters we read about in school-
books of fairytales, too. But we aren't kids
...

for Dunya Mikhail

I thank everyone I don't love…/They don't turn my life upside down.
- "Non-military Statements" by DM
...

(for Muni Auntie, Shohail Uncle and Bachchu Uncle)

1.
...

Sofiul Azam Biography

Educated in English Literature at Rajshahi University, Sofiul Azam has three poetry collections Impasse (Dhaka: Pathak Shamabesh,2003) , In Love with a Gorgon (Aarhus: Les Editions du Zaporogue,2010 and forthcoming from County Clare: Salmon Poetry) , Safe under Water (Dhaka: Magnum Opus,2014) and edited Short Stories of Selim Morshed (Dhaka: Ulukhar,2009) . His poems have appeared in magazines across the world like Prairie Schooner, Poetry Salzburg Review, Le Zaporogue, The Journal (once of Contemporary Anglo-Scandinavian Poetry) , Orbis, Erbace, The Cannon’s Mouth, Forward Press, Conversation Poetry Quarterly, Boyne Berries, Deep South, Catamaran, Protocol, Postcolonial Text, Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts, NAP Magazine, etc. and some are anthologized in Journeys, Caught in the Net, Poets Against War, Poetry for Charity Volume 2. He is now working on Earth and Windows: New and Selected Poems. He lives with his wife and son in Dhaka and teaches English at Victoria University of Bangladesh, having taught it before at Independent University Bangladesh, Southeast University and Royal University of Dhaka.)

The Best Poem Of Sofiul Azam

In Love With A Gorgon

At the time of the sun's spitting saffron out in the sky,
my life turned into a dazzling Gorgon and smiled.

The Gorgon with her snaky hair and tempting eyes
that I didn't know, turned a lot of things into stone.

Her smile drove me unwilling to suffer an eclipse,
frantic to climb the ladder of paramount ecstasy.

Prying into the tangles of love, I shrugged off
the unburdening of things we carry to the end.

Her smile seemed like music of pebbles in a stream.
I didn't know only monsters thrive under her spell.

She stared me out of countenance and I am stone.
My moss-green figure only a twister can shatter.

Now regrets grow like shrubs in the rain forest;
I can't have them all eaten by the worms of Time.


from IN LOVE WITH A GORGON (2010)

Sofiul Azam Comments

Teresa Juhasz 17 July 2005

I have now read about you, as well as a handful of your poems and it was certainly my pleasure to have done so. You have left me speechless, not to mention extremely curious to why such a well educated man with a gift to string together words in the most artistic way, leaving the colour to bleed between the lines, creating a page that no longer appears anything less than a painting in a Cathedral and makes me feel as if I was holding your beating heart in the palm of my hands. All my life I have wondered both wide and far. Learning to listen to my heart’s instant whispers. Learning to write about what I love and in return to love what I have written. Spreading my wings, soaring high into the sky, where there is another life of sense and thoughts. Amongst the clouds my pen is set free and my heart begins to bleed the ink. The sky gives me the beauty in telling my agony as well as my happiness. My writing, an art of creation, I breath in the words as if they were fresh air. Breathing out, I spread them across the sky, so they can begin to take on a life of their own. I hope that you will reply quite soon. Thank you so much …Teresa

0 0 Reply
Sofiul Azam 17 July 2005

Linda M. Stitt, renowned Canadian poet and my well-wisher, has sent her comment about my poetry in an e-mail: I have just read some of your poetry and found it profound and compelling, full of rich language and powerful imagery. I wish you every success with your work.

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Sofiul Azam 17 July 2005

Linda Rogers, renowned Canadian poet and my well-wisher, has sent her comment about my poetry in an e-mail: I enjoyed reading your poems. You have what I call the Indian eye for intense, passionate and compassionate images.

0 0 Reply

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