Here at RumiBalkhi.Com Every Month We Select Our Most Visited Poet!
Following Are Our Poets Of The Month!
Poet of the Month: JANUARY 2021
T. S. Eliot: Thomas Stearns Eliot OM was an American-born British poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor. Considered one of the 20th century’s major poets, he is a central figure in English-language Modernist poetry. Read More
Poet of the Month: DECEMBER 2020
Vahshi Bafqi: Kamal al-din or Shams al-din Mohammad, known by his pen name Vahshi Bafqi[1] (Persian: وحشی بافقی; born 1532 – died 1583) was a Persian poet of the Safavid period. Vahshi was born in the agricultural town of Bafq, southeast of the city of Yazd. Read More
Poet of the Month: NOVEMBER 2020
Jaun Elia: Syed Hussain Jaun Asghar Naqvi, commonly known as Jaun Elia (Urdu: جون ایلیا, 14 December 1931 – 8 November 2002), was an Indo-Pak Urdu poet, philosopher, biographer, and scholar. He was the brother of Rais Amrohvi and Syed Muhammad Taqi, who were journalists and psychoanalysts. He was fluent in Urdu, Arabic, English, Persian, Sanskrit and Hebrew. Read More
Poet of the Month: OCTOBER 2020
Anna Akhmatova: Anna Andreyevna Gorenko, better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova, was one of the most significant Russian poets of the 20th century. She was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in 1965 and received second-most (three) nominations for the award the following year. Read More
Poet of the Month: SEPTEMBER 2020
Abdulla Shaig (Abdulla Şaiq): Abdulla Mustafa oghlu Talibzade was born in Tiflis (Tbilisi, Georgia) on February 24, 1881 and died in Baku on July 24, 1959. Writer and educator, he studied in Tiflis and Khorasan. In 1901 he moved to Baku and worked as a teacher until 1934. Read More
Poet of the Month: AUGUST 2020
Haidari Wujodi was born in 1939, in a small village in Panjshir Province in northern Afghanistan, one of five children of a cleric. In those days the Islam practiced in Afghanistan was deeply tied into Sufi traditions of poetry. His father kept about 200 books at home, many of poetry and handwritten.. Read More
Poet of the Month: JULY 2020
Hafiz Shirazi: Hafez was born in Shiraz, Iran. Despite his profound effect on Persian life and culture and his enduring popularity and influence, few details of his life are known. The preface of his Divān, in which his early life is discussed, was written by an unknown contemporary whose name may have been Moḥammad Golandām. Read More
Poet of the Month: JUNE 2020
Hakim Omar Khayyam was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and poet. He was born in Nishabur, in northeastern Iran, and spent most of his life near the court of the Karakhanid and Seljuq rulers in the period which witnessed the First Crusade. Read More
Poet of the Month: MAY 2020
Hakim Nezami Ganjavi: Nizami Ganje’i, Nizami, or Nezāmi, whose formal name was Jamal ad-Dīn Abū Muḥammad Ilyās ibn-Yūsuf ibn-Zakkī, was a 12th-century Sunni Muslim poet. Nezāmi is considered the greatest romantic epic poet in Persian literature, who brought a colloquial and realistic style to the Persian epic. Read More
Poet of the Month: APRIL 2020
Rabia Balkhi lived in Balkh, in Afghanistan. She was called Rabia-e-Qasdadi. She fell in love with Baktash, her brother’s slave. Read More
Poet of the Month: MARCH 2020
Forugh Farrokhzad is arguably one of Iran’s most influential female poets of the twentieth century. She was a controversial modernist poet and an iconoclast. Read More
Poet of the Month: FEBRUARY 2020
Faiz Ahmad Faiz was a Pakistani poet, and author in Urdu. He was one of the most celebrated writers of the Urdu language in Pakistan. Outside literature, he has been described as “a man of wide experience” having been a teacher, an army officer, a journalist, a trade unionist and a broadcaster. Read More
Poet of the Month: JANUARY 2020
William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright, and actor. He was born on 26 April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England’s national poet and nicknamed the Bard of Avon. Read More
Poet of the Month: DECEMBER 2019
Yunus Emre: Born c. 1238, Turkey – died c. 1320, Turkey, poet and mystic who exercised a powerful influence on Turkish literature. Like Rūmī, Yunus Emre became a leading representative of mysticism in Anatolia but on a more popular level; he was venerated as a saint after his death. Read More
Poet of the Month: NOVEMBER 2019
Sheikh Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi: Shaykh Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi (may Allah be well pleased with him) is one of the Grand Masters of Tasawwuf (Sufism/Islamic Spirituality). His works like “Al Futuhat Al Makkiyya and Fusus Al Hikam” are renowned masterpiece in the knowledge of Sufism. Sheikh Ibn Arabi is known as “Sheikh Al Akbar” which means the greatest Sheikh (Spiritual knower of Allah the Mighty and Sublime). The teachings of Ibn Arabi illuminate the hearts of the seekers and disciples in the gnosis of God , and explores the hidden knowledge of Tawhid (Islamic monotheism) and Spirituality of Islam. Read More
Poet of the Month: OCTOBER 2019
Emily Brontë: Emily Jane Brontë was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. Emily was the third-eldest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother Branwell. She published under the pen name Ellis Bell. Read More
Poet of the Month: SEPTEMBER 2019
Baba Bulleh Shah – A Brief Biography: Undoubtedly, Hazrat Baba Bulleh Shah is the “King of Sufi poetry”. A humanist, Sufi poet, philosopher, teacher, rebel, and internationalist, Baba Bulleh Shah was truly a legend. All Poems
Poet of the Month: AUGUST 2019
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include “Paul Revere’s Ride”, The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was also the first American to translate Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy and was one of the Fireside Poets from New England. Read More
Poet of the Month: JULY 2019
Anna Akhmatova: Anna Akhmatova was arguably the greatest Russian woman poet. She was born Anna Andreevna Gorenko on June 23, 1889, in Bolshoi Fontan, a suburb of Odessa, Ukraine, Russian Empire. Her father, Andrei Antonovich Gorenko, was a Navy Engineer. Her mother, Inna Erazmovna (nee Stogova), belonged to Russian Nobility. Read More
Poet of the Month: JUNE 2019
Rabindranath Tagore: Poet, writer and humanitarian, Rabindranath Tagore was the first Indian to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and he played a key role in the renaissance of modern India. Tagore is most widely known for his poetry, but he was also an accomplished author of novels, short stories, plays and articles. He took an active interest in a widespread range of social, cultural and artistic endeavours. He has been described as one of the first Twentieth Century’s global man.
Rabindranath was born on 7 May 1861 Calcutta. His father Debendranath Tagore was a leading light in the Brahmo Samaj – a reforming Hindu organisation which sought to promote a monotheistic interpretation of the Upanishads and move away from the rigidity of Hindu Orthodoxy which they felt was holding back India. Debendranath Tagore also encouraged his family to learn English. Read More
Poet of the Month: MAY 2019
Partaw Naderi: Partaw Naderi born in 195 2 in Badakhshan province of Afghanistan (the birth place of Great Afghan Poet Mirza Abdul Qadir Bedil) a region bordering present-day Tajikistan, Partaw Naderi is widely regarded as one of the foremost modernist posts of Afghanistan. Like many of his educated, Dari – speaking compatriots, he is steeped in classical Persian literature and the depth of this knowledge has had a marked impact on his poetry, notably his mastery of free verse, which remains comparatively unusual in contemporary Afghan poetry. Partaw has argued that it is this familiarity with classical poetry and his meters’ that has allowed him to risk writing free verse; and his metrical control, and the music of his poetry, is both daring and highly effective. Read More
Poet of the Month: APRIL 2019
Victor Hugo: Victor Hugo was born on February 26, 1802, in Besançon, France. After training as a lawyer, Hugo embarked on the literary career. He became one of the most important French Romantic poets, novelists and dramatists of his time, having assembled a massive body of work while living in Paris, Brussels and the Channel Islands. Hugo died on May 22, 1885, in Paris. Read More
Poet of the Month: MARCH 2019
Loiq Sher Ali: Loiq Sher-Ali (1941-2000) was born in a small village called Mazar-e Sharif (it shouldn’t be confused with the city of Mazar-e Sharif which is one of the four largest city in Afghanistan) of the Panjakent district in the Sughd Region of Tajikistan. Shir-Ali was a notable figure in the Persian literary milieu of the twentieth century. He was strongly influenced by his countryman Abdollah Jafar ibn Mohammad Rudaki. Stylistically he was under the influence of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (Book of Kings) and Omar Khayyam’s poetry. Themes in his poetry are diverse. Commonly he is believed to be a cheerful poet, one can scarcely finds sadness and sorrow in his poetry.
His complete works have been fully published in 2001 in both cyrillic and Farsi script. Read More
Poet of the Month: FEBRUARY 2019
Adam Lindsay Gordon: Gordon was born at Fayal in the Azores, son of Captain Adam Durnford Gordon who had married his first cousin, Harriet Gordon, both of whom were descended from Adam of Gordon of the ballad. Captain Gordon, who had retired from the Bengal cavalry and taught Hindustani, was then staying at the Azores for the sake of his wife’s health. After living on the island of Madeira, they went to England and lived at Cheltenham in 1840.
Gordon was sent to Cheltenham College in 1841 when he was only seven, but after he had been there a year he was sent to a school kept by the Rev. Samuel Ollis Garrard in Gloucestershire. He attended the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich in 1848, where he was a contemporary and friend of Charles George Gordon (no relation, later ‘Gordon of Khartoum’) and Thomas Bland Strange (later known as ‘Gunner Jingo’). There Gordon appears to have been good at sports, but not studious and certainly undisciplined – and like Richard Henry Horne, he was asked to leave. Gordon was again admitted a pupil at Cheltenham College. He was not there for long – he appears to have left in the middle of 1852 – but the story that he was expelled from Cheltenham is without foundation. Then Gordon was sent to the Royal Grammar School Worcester in 1852. Gordon began to lead a wild and aimless life, contracted debts, and was a great anxiety to his father, who at last decided that his son should go to Australia and make a fresh start in 1853 to join the mounted police with a letter of introduction to the Governor. Read More
Poet of the Month: JANUARY 2019
Magtymguly Pyragy: Magtymguly Pyragy: (1724-1807) Turkmen Classic Poet of 18th Century. Magtymguly Pyragy was the son of the poet Azadi. He studied in Shirgazi Madrasa in the city of Khiva. He traveled a great deal and was well acquainted with the literature and folklore of Central Asia, Azerbaijan, and Iran. Some of Magtymguly’s verses are addressed to a brother who had disappeared (probably also taken captive); in these poems, the personal suffering of the poet is fused with the tragedy of his people ravaged by the enemy. More than 10,000 lines of his poems have come down to us; at times pessimistic and religious notes are discernible in his work. Read More
Poet of the Month: December 2018
Maya Angelou: Maya Angelou was a poet and award-winning author known for her acclaimed memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and her numerous poetry and essay collections.
Marguerite Annie Johnson Angelou (April 4, 1928 to May 28, 2014), known as Maya Angelou, was an American author, actress, screenwriter, dancer, poet and civil rights activist best known for her 1969 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which made literary history as the first nonfiction best-seller by an African-American woman. Angelou received several honors throughout her career, including two NAACP Image Awards in the outstanding literary work (nonfiction) category, in 2005 and 2009.
Angelou published several collections of poetry, but her most famous was 1971’s collection Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘Fore I Die, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Read More
Poet of the Month: November 2018
Mir Taqi Mir – Legendary Urdu Poet: Mir Taqi Mir was born at Agra in 1723. He spent his early childhood under the care and companionship of his father, whose constant emphasis on the importance of love and the value of continence and compassion in life went a long way in molding the character of the poet, and this became the chief thematic strand of his poetry.
Mir is one of the immortals among Urdu poets. He is a perfect artist of the Ghazal, which makes its peculiar appeal through compression, suggestion, imagery and musicality. He builds his poetry on the foundations of his personal experience. His favorite theme is love – love unfulfilled – and his favorite manner is conversational. Mir lived at a time when Urdu poetry was yet at a formative stage – its language was getting reformed and purged of native crudities, and its texture was being enriched with borrowings from Persian imagery and idiom. Aided by his aesthetic instincts, Mir struck a fine balance between the old and the new, the indigenous and the imported elements. Knowing that Urdu is essentially an Indian language, he retained the best in native Hindi speech and leavened it with a sprinkling of Persian diction and phraseology, so as to create a poetic language at once simple, natural and elegant, acceptable alike to the elite and the common folk. Consequently he has developed a style which has been the envy of all succeeding poets…
It is a commonplace of criticism that Mir is a poet of pathos and melancholy moods. His pathos, it should be remembered, is compounded of personal and public causes. His life was a long struggle against unfavorable circumstances…
Mir was a prolific writer. His complete works, Kulliaat, consist of 6 Dewans, containing 13,585 couplets comprising all kinds of poetic forms: Ghazal, Masnavi, Qasida, Rubai, Mustezaad, satire, etc. He died in Lucknow on 20 September 1810. Read More
Poet of the Month: October 2018
Qahar Asi (April 12, 1956 – September 29, 1994) was a notable modern Afghan poet and agriculturist.
He was born in Malima in Panjshir province. He is considered to be Afghanistan’s most famous modern poet who has practiced both “New” and “Classic” poetry styles.
Asi died in Kabul when a rocket hit his home during the 90s civil war. Like lots of other Afghan poets and writers of his time, Asi showed his concerns about the political and social situation of Afghanistan. His poetry is, sometimes, strongly influenced by the then socio-political developments in Afghanistan. His explicit expression of the situations caused him personal problems with the then regimes in Kabul. His book Az Jazeera e Khoon (Persian: از جزیره خون) (from the Blood Island) is a good example where he expresses his concerns about the situation of his country during the rule of the Mujaheedin and the civil war.
Asi promised to publish a poetry book each year and was successful in keeping his promise. He also wrote many poems with romantic and emotional contents and worked with Afghan singer Farhad Darya.
Asi was born in the small village of Malima in the now Panjshir Province. He studied agriculture at Kabul University. Asi was married to Meetra and had a daughter named Mahasti. Like many other Afghans of his time, Asi had to flee to one of the neighboring countries to save himself and his family from the destruction of the civil war. He chose Iran and arrived there in the spring of 1994. In his short stay in Mashhad, Asi worked intensively with Afghan Poets and published a book and many articles. He then had to go back to Afghanistan after being denied a residence permit in Iran. Shortly after returning to Kabul, he was killed by a rocket which hit his home.
In 1964, after the ratification of a new constitution, and after Loya Jirga (“grand assembly”) of Pashtun tribes, the term “Persian language” in “Dari”(Persian: درى) is renamed.The books of schools were called before 1970, Persian language (Persian: فارسى). Afterwards are first changed to “Farsi ye Dari” “Persian Dari” and then they were called only “Dari Reading Book”. In response to this issue wrote Qahar Asi a canticle for Parsi. The poem says (Persian: دل ماست پارسی; Del e ma ast Parsi; Persian is our heart). The poem is composed and sung by Afghan, Persian and Tajik singers. Read More
Poet of the Month: September 2018
Nikoloz Baratashvili: Nikoloz “Tato” Baratashvili was a Georgian poet. He was one of the first Georgians to marry a modern nationalism with European Romanticism and to introduce “Europeanism” into Georgian literature. Despite his early death and a tiny literary heritage of fewer than forty short lyrics, one extended poem, and a few private letters, Baratashvili is considered to be the high point of Georgian Romanticism. He was referred as the “Georgian Byron”. Nikoloz Baratashvili, affectionately known as Tato, was born in Tiflis (Tbilisi), Georgia’s capital, which was then a principal city of Russian Transcaucasia. His father, Prince Meliton Baratashvili (1795–1860), was an impoverished nobleman working for the Russian administration. His mother, Ephemia Orbeliani (1801–1849), was a sister of the Georgian poet and general Prince Grigol Orbeliani and a scion of the penultimate Georgian king Erekle II. Baratashvili graduated, in 1835, from a Tiflis gymnasium for nobility, where he was tutored by Solomon Dodashvili, a Georgian patriot and liberal philosopher. Read More
Poet of the Month: August 2018
Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin: Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was born on the 26th of May, 1799 in Moscow in the noble family (his father was the retired major).
In the same day the emperor’s granddaughter was born. That’s way the chimes had been heard all over the town during the whole day. So, on casual concurrence of events the birthday of the Russian genius was marked by people’s rejoicing . The place of his born is also symbolic- Moscow is the heart of Russia, Russian life.
Future poet was christened on the 8th of May in honor of Holy Alexander, Konstantinopolskiy Patriarch, in the Pushkin`s parents, Sergei Lvovich and Nadezhda Osipovna, were distant relatives- second cousins.
This family (except Alexander were also Olga and Lev) belonged to the most educated part of the Moscow society.
Many poets, musicians, painters gathered in their house. French governesses, his grandmother Maria Alexeevna and the famous nanny Arina Rodionovna took part in Pushkin`s behaviour. Young poet also had access to his uncle’s library. All this influenced Pushkin and formed his soul. He wrote his first verses in French, that’ same in the lycee was “Frenchman”.
In 1811 he was selected to be among the thirty students in the first class at the lycee in Tsarskoye Selo. The syllabus of the lycee was rather extensive, but not well thought out. Pupils were prepared for high state career and had the rights of those who had graduated from the University.
A duel with d’Anthes took place on January 27, 1837. D’Anthes fired first, and Pushkin was mortally wounded; after he fell, he summoned the strength to fire his shot and to wound, slightly, his adversary. Pushkin died two days later, on January 29.
He was buried beside his mother at dawn on February 6, 1837 at Svyatogorsky Monastery, near Mikhailovskoe. Today, as annually on the 10th of February, 6th of June, 21st of August – memory day, the poet’s birthday and the date of his arrival at exile-at the poet’s gravestone a joint pray will be carried out for the repose of the eternal sole of Alexander Pushkin. Nowadays the poet’s grave is declared as the national property of Russian Federation. Read Poems
Poet of the Month: July 2018
Walt Whitman: Walt Whitman was born on May 31, 1819, the second son of Walter Whitman, a housebuilder, and Louisa Van Velsor. The family, which consisted of nine children, lived in Brooklyn and Long Island in the 1820s and 1830s. At the age of twelve, Whitman began to learn the printer’s trade, and fell in love with the written word. Largely self-taught, he read voraciously, becoming acquainted with the works of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and the Bible.
Whitman worked as a printer in New York City until a devastating fire in the printing district demolished the industry. In 1836, at the age of seventeen, he began his career as teacher in the one-room school houses of Long Island. He continued to teach until 1841, when he turned to journalism as a full-time career. He founded a weekly newspaper, Long-Islander, and later edited a number of Brooklyn and New York papers.
Along with Emily Dickinson, he is considered one of America’s most important poets. Read More
Poet of the Month: June 2018
Dorothy Walters: Dorothy Walters, PHD, taught college level English and American literature as well as Women’s Studies in various Midwestern universities for most of her professional life. In 1988, she took an early retirement from teaching and moved to San Francisco, where she lived for the next twenty-one years. She continues to write mystical poetry. Read More
Poet of the Month: May 2018
Mary Oliver: Mary Oliver, (born September 10, 1935, Maple Heights, Ohio, U.S.), American poet whose work reflects a deep communion with the natural world. Oliver attended Ohio State University and Vassar College but did not earn a degree. She worked for a time as a secretary for the sister of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Read More
Poet of the Month: April 2018
Mirza Abdul Qadir Bedil: Bedil presents his writings in a mysterious format, almost like riddles that one has to unlock. Each one of his verses needs interpretation along with the word by word translation from Dari/Farsi. His Hindi style presents the reader with the additional challenge of gaining insight into his wisdom. Bedil’s school of thought at the beginning had numerous followers in Afghanistan, India, Tajikistan, and Iran. Contrary to this, Bedil was, and is, well respected in Afghanistan and his work is treasured by all circles of Afghan society, to the extent that there are Bedil gatherings where his admirers recite his work and discuss the meaning of his wisdom. People who understand and have interpreted Bedil’s work are well respected and admired in Afghan society; they are called Bedil Shinasan (Bedil Experts) . Read More
Poet of the Month: March 2018
Sa’di Shirazi: Born in Shiraz, Sadi was the son of a minor poet. His father’s patron was Sad ben Zangi, from whom the younger poet took his takhallus, or poetical pseudonym, of Sadi. Unfortunately, all our knowledge of Sadi must be derived from his own writings. Generally his life is broken into three main periods. First, he is thought to have studied in Shiraz, his birthplace, and in Baghdad until 1226, leaving these cities only to go on pilgrimages to different religious shrines. While in Baghdad, he studied under the well-known Sufi Shaikh Shihabud-Din Suhrawardi, of whose unselfish piety Sadi makes mention in his first major work, the Bustan. He proved to be a very fine student and soon gained fame as a wit and poet of short descriptive passages. His early poetry on the whole represented well the clever, half-pious, half-worldly side of the Persian character. It was during the second period, from 1226 to 1256, that Sadi traveled widely and gained the experiences that were to be expressed so cogently later in his works. He left Shiraz largely because the old social and political infrastructure was breaking down. This was a period of warring and chaos in Persia. Sadi visited central Asia, India, Syria, Egypt, Arabia, Ethiopia, and Morocco. Read More
Poet of the Month: February 2018
Sir Allama Mohammad Iqbal: Sir Doctor Allama Muhammad Iqbal (November 9, 1877 – April 21, 1938) was a Muslim poet and philosopher who was born in Sialkot town, in British India (which is now in Pakistan). He became the national poet of Pakistan. He is also known as the poet of East. He wrote poetry in Urdu and Persian. Read More
Poet of the Month: January 2018
Hakim Sannai Ghaznavi: Hakim Abul-Majd Majdūd ibn Ādam Sanā’ī Ghaznavi was a Persian Sufi poet who lived in Ghazna, in what is now Afghanistan between the 11th century and the 12th century. He died around 1131. Sanai’s best known work is The Walled Garden of Truth or the The Hadiqat-ul Haqiqah. Read More
Poet of the Month: December 2017
Maulana Jalaluddin Mohammad Rumi Balkhi: Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi Balkhi was a 13th century Persian poet, an Islamic dervish and a Sufi mystic. He is regarded as one of the greatest spiritual masters and poetical intellects. Born in 1207 AD in the Balkhi Province of Afghanistan, he belonged to a family of learned theologians. Read More
