University 01
March 22, 2021 2024-05-14 16:51University 01
Welcome to ICPWE
Why ICPWE was created?
ICPWE was established to address the underrepresentation of Pakistani English literature in academia and global literary discourse. Recognizing the wealth of literary talent in Pakistan, Kinnaird College for Women University founded the conference in 2014 to provide a platform for scholars and writers to showcase, discuss, and promote Pakistani English writing. Through ICPWE, the aim is to elevate the recognition and appreciation of Pakistani English literature both locally and internationally.
Our Staff
Waseem Anwar
Mirza Raheel Baig
Resonances
This is spiderhome, nomad country,
Scuttling and hunting life from rock to rock,
Grey, watchful, devious, only they persist
In an opposition of fire and sand.
Shahid Hosain,
“Concerning the Difficulties of Faith in Hot Climates,”
First Voices (OUP 1965)
The English Alphabet dangled it’s A
for Apple when I was eight in Bombay …
Zulfikar Ghose,
“One Chooses a Language”
50 Poems. (OUP: 2010, composed circa 1960s)
… question: should English be used creatively in Pakistan? … [Young] poets … [it] is to them we
must look for the creation of a Pakistani idiom ….
Taufiq Rafat,
“Towards a Pakistani Idiom,”
Aleph Review, 2017 (originally, Karachi Univ.1969, 19 and 32)
… Ice-candy-man transforms himself into a birdman … foreshadowing the poetic impulse of his
future …. News and gossip flow off his glib tongue like a torrent. He reads Urdu newspapers … He
can, when he applies himself, read the headlines in … the English Daily.
Bapsi Sidhwa,
“Chapter 4,” Cracking India (USA: 1991) – Ice Candy Man (UK: 1988)
Taken all in all, the wind sits fair for our [Pakistani] poetry in English … for cultural survival in the
world … and the innovative thrust into new frontiers ….
Shaista S. Sirajuddin,
“Three Contemporary Poets: A Study of Their Use of Language” (1991)
… ordinary readers as well as critics, become aware as to where Pakistani literature written in
English stands … this awareness might shift more attention to [English] creative writing in Pakistan.
Tariq Rahman,
“Conclusion,” A History of Pakistani Literature in English 1947-1988. (OUP 2015, 289-290)
In today’s globalized world, in most instances, there are only a few dividing lines between ‘resident’
and ‘diaspora’ writers of Pakistani origin.
Muneeza Shamsie,
“Preface,” Hybrid Tapestries (OUP 2017, xi)
If the materiality of cultural criticism must now locate its idiom in the productive absence of alterity,
it must similarly realign its relation to the figure of gender ….
Sara Suleri,
“Chapter 1,” The Rhetoric of English India (Chicago 1992, 15 and 23)
The pursuit of ‘(trans)gender-neutral’ analytic methodologies and ways of reading … could result in
re-worlding … provide … grounds for intervention and discussion … [theorise] transnational
dimensions … of migration and diasporic (dis)locations ….
Fawzia Afzal-Khan,
“Afterword,” Transcultural Humanities in South Asia (Routledge 2022, 473)
I suggest inserting ‘English poetic’ into Rafat’s seminal idea [“Pakistani idiom”] and theorising it …
to contextualise and analyse this much-exploited term.
Waseem Anwar,
in The Routledge Companion to Pakistani Anglophone Writing (Routledge 2019, 370)
