A Day With Destiny

Foreword

Shawkat Haider's first book of poems, Graffiti, appeared eight years back in 1994. In his new volume, A Day with Destiny, we see in the poet a forward movement in tone and maturity of thought. The poet grapples with a variety of subjects - the usual predicaments of life that accompanies with it the trials and tribulations of daily living, the self-fascination and inwardness of the vocation of poetry itself, as well as aspects of "desire", "passion”, weather, landscape, and mindscape.

Haider's poems although written in the English original, employ a somewhat archaic diction, perhaps indicating the poet's fondness and familiarity with the Romantic, Victorian, or Georgian poetic traditions in English poetry.

The majority of creative writing in Bangladesh is predictably and understandably done in the native mother tongue of Bangla. However, more and more of the younger generation are opting for English as their language for creativity- poetry, fiction, and non-fiction.

Shawkat Haider's A Day with Destiny is another addition to this newly emergent sub-genre of Bangladeshi writing in the English language. I wish him the very best in a writing career that I am sure is full of promise, and hope that this new book reaches a wider audience that Haider might desire to reach in the times to come.

- Sudeep Sen, author of Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (Harper Collins) & Postcards from Bangladesh (UPL).