Ghulam Muhammad Qasir

Ghulam Muhammad Qasir (d. 1999) was a Pakistani Urdu poet from Paharpur, Dera Ismail Khan, counted among the finest modern poets of the Urdu ghazal. A Pashtun who grew up speaking Pashto, he made Urdu his literary home. Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi introduced him in the journal Fanoon in 1977, the year his first collection Tasalsul appeared; Qasmi called him "the poet of continuity". Two further collections followed — Aathwaan Aasman Bhi Neela Hai (1988) and Darya-e-Gumaan (1997) — and his complete works were gathered as Ik Sher Abhi Tak Rehta Hai. By profession a lecturer in Urdu at government colleges across the North-West Frontier Province, he also wrote more than seventy dramas and programmes for PTV Peshawar and Radio Pakistan, including the popular serials Talash and Bhoot Bangla. His ghazal turns away from the beloved alone toward the deprivation and hope of ordinary people — a book instead of gunpowder, a dream instead of despair. He died in Peshawar on 20 February 1999 and is buried there; the Government of Pakistan awarded him the Pride of Performance posthumously in 2006–07.