Agha Shahid Ali: Difference between revisions

{{Short description| Kashmiri-American Poet}}

| birth_place        = [[New Delhi]], [[India]]

'''Agha Shahid Ali''' (4 February 1949 &ndash; 8 December 2001) was an Kashmiri-American [[poet]].<ref name="Jacket Magazine-Agha Shahid Ali">{{cite web|url = http://jacketmagazine.com/18/ali.html| title = A Tribute to Agha Shahid Ali|publisher = [[Jacket (magazine)|Jacket Magazine]]|access-date = 2 January 2010}}</ref><ref name="King-Kok Cheung">{{cite book|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=6v659OPjoKIC&pg=PA194 |title = An interethnic companion to Asian American literature|quote=Contemporary South Asian American writers belong primarily to this middle and upper class: Kashmiri-American Agha Shahid Ali, Meena Alexander, Bharati Mukherjee, Vikram Seth, Pakistani American Sara Suleria, Javaid Qazi, Indo-Canadian Rohinton Mistry, Uma Parameswaran, Sri Lankan Canadian Michael Ondaatje, and Indo-Guyanese Canadian Cyril Dabydeen, among others.|publisher = [[Cambridge University Press]]|access-date = 2 January 2010|isbn = 9780521447904|year = 1997}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Manan Kapoor|first=Sahapedia|title=How the legendary Begum Akhtar influenced the life and poetry of Agha Shahid Ali|url=https://scroll.in/article/923025/how-the-legendary-begum-akhtar-influenced-the-life-and-poetry-of-agha-shahid-ali|access-date=2020-08-05|website=Scroll.in|language=en-US}}</ref> His collections include ''A Walk Through the Yellow Pages'', ''The Half-Inch Himalayas,'' ''A Nostalgist's Map of America'', ''[[The Country Without a Post Office]]'', and ''Rooms Are Never Finished,'' the latter a finalist for the [[National Book Award]] in 2001.

Agha Shahid Ali was born in the illustrious Agha family of [[Srinagar]], [[Kashmir]].<ref>{{Cite web | url=http://kashmirlife.net/kandahars-qizilbash-issue-35-vol-09-157293/ |title = Kandahar's Qizilbash|date = 30 November 2017}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web | url=https://aghafamilyofsrinagarkashmir.wordpress.com | title=Agha Family of Srinagar Kashmir}}</ref> He left for the United States in 1976.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.rattle.com/the-veiled-suite-the-collected-poems-by-agha-shahid-ali/|title=The veiled suite, the collected poems by agha shahid ali|publisher=Rattle|date=10 June 2009|author=Sarah Wetzel-Fishman}}</ref> Shahid's father Agha Ashraf Ali was a renowned educationist. His grandmother [[Begum Zaffar Ali]] was the first woman matriculate of [[Kashmir]].<ref name="Outlook India-Kashmir Conflict & Agha Shahid Ali">{{cite web|url = http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?216239| title = 'The Ghat of the Only World': Agha Shahid Ali in Brooklyn|publisher = [[Outlook (Indian magazine)|Outlook]]|access-date = 2 January 2010}}</ref> Shahid was educated at the [[Burn Hall School]], later [[University of Kashmir]] and [[Hindu College, University of Delhi]].<ref name="Jacket Magazine-Agha Shahid Ali"/> He earned a PhD in English from [[Pennsylvania State University]] in 1984, and an M.F.A. from the [[University of Arizona]] in 1985.<ref name="Jacket Magazine-Agha Shahid Ali"/> He held teaching positions at nine universities and colleges in India and the United States.<ref name="Jacket Magazine-Agha Shahid Ali"/>

Shahid's upbringing was Muslim. Shahid and his brother Iqbal both studied at an Irish Catholic school and, in an interview, he recalled that: "There was never a hint of any kind of parochialism in the home."<ref>{{Cite web | url=https://thewire.in/books/i-write-on-that-void-kashmir-kaschmir-cashmere-qashmir-remembering-agha-shahid-ali |title = 'I Write on that Void: Kashmir, Kaschmir, Cashmere, Qashmir' – Remembering Agha Shahid Ali}}</ref>

Ali taught at the [[MFA Program for Poets & Writers]] at [[University of Massachusetts Amherst]], at the MFA Writing Seminars at [[Bennington College]] as well as at creative writing programs at [[University of Utah]], [[Baruch College]], [[Warren Wilson College]], [[Hamilton College (New York)|Hamilton College]] and [[New York University]]. He died of brain cancer in December 2001 and was buried in Northampton, in the vicinity of Amherst, a town sacred to his beloved poet Emily Dickinson.

[[Category:Indian emigrants to the United States]]

[[Category:University of Utah faculty]]

[[Category:University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty]]

[[Category:Hindu College, Delhi alumni]]

[[Category:20th-century Indian poets]]

[[Category:Pennsylvania State University alumni]]

[[Category:University of Arizona alumni]]

[[Category:20th-century English male writers]]

[[Category:20th-century American male writers]]