ISLAMABAD, April 4: The Pakistan Academy of Letters (PAL) has published the new issue of quarterly journal Adbiyat comprising selection from the works of those Urdu writers, who were born in Pakistan after partition.

PAL Chairman Iftikhar Arif introduced the new issue before a select group of journalists here on Monday. The 57-year period of Urdu writing in Pakistan has been documented in this publication containing over 500 pages.

It presents a selection of 48 Ghazals, 26 poems, 14 short stories, four analytical surveys, two humorous sketches, a chapter of 38 articles on remembrances and look-backs, excerpts from the novel Bas Ki Purya of Hameed Shahed, inter- translation in Urdu from Balochi, Punjabi, Pushto, Saraiki and Sindhi short stories and poems, and three short crisp life-sketches.

There are essays in it which attempt critical evaluation of Ghazal, elongation and attitudes of minds as well as modernist Urdu poetry and commentary on some Quranic verses.

The journal is an authentic record of Urdu writers, who had emerged during the seventies and nineties of the 20th century, Iftikhar Arif said. Differentiating the quality of Urdu literature written in India after independence, he said Urdu written in India now had different leaning and Hindi expression and idioms had swamped it.

He said his generation of writers had inherited the mood of Mir, Ghalib and Iqbal, but the present Urdu writers mirrored a fresh attitude notwithstanding the dominant role of tradition in stimulating the writer's advancement.

Recalling the famous adage that no man was an island unto himself, least of all a writer, he said some time after 1970 the new generation of Urdu writers decided to speak with an individual voice and walk out of box in a different direction but was fortified with a clear roadmap of the past.

At this point, he quoted from Faiz Ahmad Faiz, who had once remarked that "the first criterion of good literature lies in the beauty of its composition and value judgments about the road taken follows much later".

Discussing the new directions of Urdu creative writing during the past 57 years, Iftikhar Arif said the stimulus of events were reflected all over the new writings. "One would discover new idioms, slangs as well as response to various stages of national history, such as 1965 war, the events of 1971, the craving for democratic dispensation and the sufferings of Kashmiris and Palestinians."

He said good selection of contemporary literature from Urdu prose and poetry as well as translation of pieces from Pakistani and other languages had also been included in the journal.

In their editorial remarks, Mubin Mirza and Tayyab Munir say writers included in the journal display a positive attitude and aver that good literature cannot be made to order but every writer wrings out the conscience of the age in which he lives and writes.