On Thursday, May 15, poet and Shabdaguchha editor Hasanal Abdullah gave a poetry reading as the featured poet at the Woodhaven branch of the Queens Public Library in New York City. Following the reading, he conducted a workshop on writing poetry with the young poets in attendance. The event was hosted and coordinated by librarian Ken Gordon.
Hasanal Abdullah recited several poems from the Spanish version of his widely discussed poetry collection Under the Thin Layers of Light. The reading began with “The Cacophony of Gunfire,” a poem dedicated to his father who was martyred in 1971. He paid tribute to the three million martyrs of Bangladesh’s Liberation War and highlighted the suffocating political situation in the country today. Other notable poems he read included “The Vultures Are Fine,” “I Will Eat,” “The Experience of the Grave,” “Anxiety in the Milky Way,” and “Independent Sonnet 77.”
Under the Thin Layers of Light was first published in New York in 2015 as a bilingual English-Bengali edition. Its Chinese and Polish translations were released in Taiwan (2019) and Poland (2022), respectively. The poet announced that an Arabic version will soon be published in Morocco.
Notably, Hasanal Abdullah’s poetry has been translated into 16 languages. He has received four international poetry awards, including the Homer European Medal, and has participated in international poetry festivals in various countries as an invited guest. He has published 59 books and recently retired from his position as a mathematics teacher at a New York City high school.