During conversation I found her a humble person. I was glad to meet Kishwar Apa, she is fondly called Kishwar Apa by the young and the old alike. She recited her favourite poetry and she also discussed the process of her own discovery. She also told her life's journey from a timid girl to a strong woman.
Born in 1940 in Bulandshahr, India, Kishwar Naheed migrated with her family to Pakistan and settled in Lahore. Defying the norms she fought to receive education as at that time women were not allowed to attend school. She studied at home and obtained a high school diploma through correspondence courses. After matriculation, there was a lot of resistance to her taking admission in college but her brother, Syed Iftikhar Zaidi, paid her tuition fee and helped her continue her formal education. She obtained Bachelor of Arts degree in 1959 and masters in Economics in 1961 from Punjab University, Lahore.
As a young girl, she was inspired by the girls who had started going to Aligarh Muslim University in those times. "The white kurta and white gharara under a black burqa that they wore looked so elegant to me. I wanted to go to college, to read and write."
Her family suffered hugely due to the Partition and the subsequent migration. Her father, Syed Ibne Hasan, was the secretary of All India Muslim League in Bulandshahr. He distributed sweets on the creation of Pakistan and was jailed soon after. After he was released on parole, he fled to Lahore. And the family joined him after some time.
Kishwar Naheed was married to poet Yousuf Kamran, and spent a working woman life raising two sons and supporting her family after her husband's death in the eighties. She held administrative roles in various national institutions. She was Director General of Pakistan National Council of the Arts before her retirement. She also edited a prestigious literary magazine 'Mahe naw' and founded an organisation 'Hawwa' whose goal is to help women without an independent income become financially independent through cottage industries and selling handicrafts.
Zehra Nigah an amazing poet inspired Kishwar Naheed. "The day I saw her for the first time in a mushaira held in Punjab University. It was 1954 and she had come to read her poetry from Karachi - a unique feat in those times for a young woman poet," Kishwar Naheed said. Her written work, spanning for more than four decades, chronicles her experiences as a woman writer engaged in the creative and civic arenas, even as she has dealt with personal, social, and official backlashes.
Her stature as the matriarch of Urdu poetry was given to her due to her highly productive works as a writer, her reworking of the lyrical ghazal, the innovations she helped bring about in the forms of free verse and prose poetry, and the extensive translations she has made of radical poets from other languages. She is more prolific than most of her contemporaries with various collections of verse, a pungent collection of personal memoirs, pen portraits of writers and artists, and translations of some key feminist literary texts from other languages into Urdu beside her own literary work. She also writes a regular weekly newspaper column. Her columns for the daily Jang newspaper on issues of political, social, and literary importance were collected in a book "Warq Warq Aaina".
She has published twelve volumes of collections of poems till now from both Pakistan and India. She has also written eight books for children and has won the prestigious UNESCO award for children's literature. Her Urdu poetry has also been published in foreign languages all over the world her famous poem 'We Sinful Women' known among Pakistani feminists as a women's anthem. The same title has been given to a groundbreaking anthology of contemporary Urdu feminist poetry, translated and edited by Rukhsana Ahmad and published in London by The Women's Press in 1991. Kishwar Naheed also champions the cause of peace in South Asia and has played a significant role in promoting Pakistan India People's Forum and South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Writers Forum. She has participated in global literary and cultural movements bringing together writers and artists who believe in a fair and equitable global political order. Her powerful poems against extremist religious thought, violence, terrorism and increased suffering of women and girls due to radicalization have created waves locally and internationally.
Kishwar Naheed's poetic oeuvre consists of many volumes of poetry, six of which were published between 1969 and 1990. Her first poetry collection was "Lab-e-goya". She received numerous awards during her long association with Urdu literature and poetry including; Adamjee Prize of Literature on "Lab-e-goya" (1969), UNESCO Prize for Children's Literature on "Dais Dais Ki Kahanian", Best Translation award of Columbia University, Mandela Prize (1997) and Sitara-e-Imtiaz (2000).