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Haiku in Punjabi - Angelee Deodhar
The origin of haiku in Punjabi begins with Prof Puran Singh’s translation of Hokku by Basho, Issa and Buson and his own collection of hokku Achan Chet Udarian in the early 20th century.
Then many poets came to write haiku in Hindi and Punjabi, chief among these was Prof Satya Bhushan Varma, the first Indian scholar of Japanese, who was a pioneer of haiku in several languages. He started the first haiku club in India and began publishing haiku in Hindi, Punjabi and several other Indian languages, in a bimonthly inland format called Haiku Patrika in the seventies.
Mr Satyanand Java, Satyapaul Chugh, Urmila Kaul, Mohan Ktiyal and Devki Aggarwal were well known for their Punjabi haiku. Amrita Pritam translated some haiku into Punjabi in a journal called Nagmani.
In 2000 Mr.Kashmiri Lal Chawla who was influenced by Hindi haiku founded the Muktsar group of poets to write haiku in Panjabi.
Around 2000 in Punjab, haiku was introduced by Parminder Sodhi in his book of translations of Japanese haiku Japani Haiku Shairi .
Mr. Amarjit Sathi Tiwana greatly influenced by Mr.Sodhi’s book, started writing and promoting Punjabi haiku in 2003 and created a Panjabi Haiku Blog in 2007 (haikupunjabi.wordpress.com). In this online project he introduces contemporary and classic haiku from around the world to speakers of Punjabi daily. There are 5 editors and over 200 contributors.
In 2007 he also started the Punjabi haiku group on Facebook which has 8 Admins and about 2000 members. From Punjabi Haiku Group on Facebook developed the Punjabi Haiku forum. Mr Tiwana has taken the promotion of haiku as his life work.
In 2008 he brought out his first book of haiku Nimakh (time taken to blink an eye) and poet Iqbal Deep brought out his collection Kshin.
In 2009, Mr Davinder Poonia published Kaniyaan and Mr.Amarjit Sathi Tiwana along with poet Gurpreet his second book Harey Harey Taarey, a collection of 135 children’s haiku from around the world. This book has been placed in many schools in Bhatinda and Mansa districts of Punjab and distributed free to introduce school children to haiku.
There are several other blogs and individual pages of poets writing haiku in Punjabi, but nothing on an organized or regular basis.
In 2010, the world's second online Panjabi book Trale Tupke was released - is a Haiku Shayari written by Mohan Gill which has about four hundred haiku in it.
In 2010, the Panjabi Haiku Forum in collaboration with the Department of Punjabi at the Punjabi University, Patiala organized the First International Punjabi Haiku Conference. A trilingual book in English, Hindi and Punjabi Blue Sky Ringing by the American poet John Brandi, with a Panjabi translation by Amarjit Sathi and translated into Hindi by Angelee Deodhar was released on this occasion,also Mr Gurmeet Sandhu’s Khiwan and Darbara Singh’s Pal Khin.
On 8th March, the International Women’s Day, the Second International Punjabi Haiku conference was held at the Punjabi University, Patiala where poets from India and abroad came to share their haiku and its related forms. The inaugural session of the conference was presided over by the Vice Chancellor of the university Dr. Jaspal Singh and Dr. Dalip Kaur Tiwana, a famous Punjabi novelist.
Five books of haiku were released on this occasion :
Haiku Bodh (Haiku Primer) by Mr Amarjit Sathi Tiwana.
Lishk by Mr Darbara Singh,
Namolian by Ms Arvinder Kaur,
One Moment Collection of Haikus, a trilingual book edited
and published by Dr. Mandeep Mann
Sargi Vela by Mr.Kanwaljit Mangat.
Of these the most significant one is the Haiku Bodh (Haiku Primer)
by Mr Amarjit Sathi Tiwana.This book is the first of its kind and will be useful in introducing the novice poet to haiku and its related forms in Panjabi.
All the delegates were given a trilingual copy of the conference anthology containing 114 haiku by 38 poets.
The audience for haiku is large. There are 120 million Punjabi speakers, 80 million in Pakistan, 20-25 million in India and the rest spread around the world.
Today, a decade after its origin, Punjabi haiku has come into its own and one can read it at various sites. There is no formal Punjabi haiku society and no membership fees. All the efforts to propagate haiku in Punjabi have been consistently made
by Mr Amarjit Sathi Tiwana, who has spent a lot of his own money to make books of haiku available in schools and libraries of various colleges and universities.
However what is needed today is a bilingual/ trilingual approach so that Punjabi haiku can reach a much larger audience. We must aim at a bilingual English- Punjabi web presence (site or blog) and make books which are bilingual, so that English language poets abroad and poets from other parts of India can understand the Punjabi haiku.
Angelee Deodhar
July 2013
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Related words
***** . Haiku from Punjab .
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1 comment:
Lovely to read all this information, Angelee. India is such a huge country that what is happening in one part of the country the others don't get to know.
thank you
warmly,
_kala
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