Interactions with Ismail Aashna’s Poetry
Ismail Aashna is a celebrated Kashmiri poet, author, educationist, and social activist from Bandipora, known for his trilingual mastery in Kashmiri, Urdu, and English. His poetry reflects both deep personal-emotional and the collective-unconscious of Kashmir. According to an Instagram post from the Port Harcourt Poetry Festival, “Ismail Aashna’s English poems have appeared in several Journals, including Muse India, The Criterion and Atunis Poetry.com Additionally, his work has been featured in Poetry Review, Ambit, New Coin, Ake Review, Lunaris, A review of International English Literature and Aura Literary Arts Review, as well as other Prominent journals across The UK, USA, Canada, India and South Africa.”
Aashna has published five anthologies in English till date entitled Hearts Avenues I, Hearts Avenues II, The Unheard Songs, From the Depths of Pain, and Waves and Whirlpools; besides Ase Toug Ne Dazun, Jegriken Ghlyen Wanann Manz, Siyah Gulaban Manz collections of Kashmiri poetry. All the anthologies of Aashna are genetically associated with him. All of them are organic wholes and share organic relationship with him and with his earlier anthologies of his poetry. The metaphors, archetypes and similes recur again and again in all collections of his poetry like the traversing lightnings in the skies suggesting their organic relationship. That is what make his poetry more superb and more beautiful. Readers will appreciate this relationship among his all poetic editions. While writing the foreword of Hearts Avenues I, Professor G R Malik advised him to include the foreword of Ase Tog Na Dazun, the collection of his Kashmiri poetry, with his future anthologies so that the reader enjoys the organic relationship between Ase Tog Na Dazun and his other collections of his poems in English.
Aashna is not only an individual nor are his poems poeticising his individual........
