50 Poems

This concise and representative volume of Zulfikar Ghose’s poetry is for the general reader and for scholars specializing in contemporary English poetry and post-colonial literature.

    The earliest of the selected poems—first published almost fifty years ago in The Times Literary Supplement, The London Magazine, New Statesman, and The Spectator, and broadcast on the BBC Third Programme—established Zulfikar Ghose as Pakistan’s premier English language poet. Deracination, an obsessive theme in his early work, resonates as a metaphor for the human condition and gives the poems their universal appeal.

    The new poems draw upon a wider experience, ranging from an elegy on Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to a meditation on the Botanical Garden in Rio de Janeiro, all heightened by a philosophical underpinning which is a hallmark of Zulfikar Ghose’s work. An impeccable craftsman and creator of striking images, whose themes touch the core of human experience, he is a poet of lasting significance: 50 Poems presents his essential work.