he long prose poem, Sleep Voyages by Azra Abbas, was first published in the original Urdu in 1981. That was a time when the prose poem in Urdu was under fire. Urdu poetry, with its roots in the traditional structure and language of the ghazal, its sophisticated metrical system embellished with innovative and clever rhyming schemes, had also earlier resisted the free verse form in Urdu poetry.

Free verse finally made its way through, but without abandoning meter. The free verse in Urdu is strictly metrical. The digression is in the length of the lines and the rhyming arrangement, which is no longer a requisite. Thirty years on, the prose poem was too much of an affront to the traditional sensibility of the reader and poet alike. It was a small group of poets, almost isolated, who were writing prose poems at that time.

Along with a few others, Qamar Jamil and Iftikhar Jalib were the major exponents of this form. Jalib also wrote the foreword to this long poem and Azra Abbas has mentioned in one of her later books that he was a great source of encouragement for her while she was writing it. I was introduced to this poem through a translation assignment for the journal Pakistani Literature published by the Pakistan Academy of Letters in Islamabad.

Muzaffar Iqbal was the guest editor who sent me the very first subsection of the poem that was later published in translation. By that time, two of my own books of poetry had been published, and the third one was underway. I was also aware of the controversy surrounding the prose poem, but I had yet to encounter any substantial published work in the genre. A couple of Nasreen Anjum Bhatti’s and Zahid Dar’s poems, along with this poem, opened up for me the door to this dimension of poetry.

While reading Azra’s poem, it was not the structure or form that intrigued me, but rather its content, although I later realised that the scope of the form could accommodate that kind of content. The poem was not a continuous, meaningful narrative but a collage of fragments that were not integrated into a coherent whole. It nevertheless revealed highly poetic, creative imagery that expressed, with intensity, the poet’s state of being and the state she must have been in while the poem was written.

The language was simple and the images were concrete and mostly visual. This made it easy for me to translate it. The very first lines read:

“Feet walking on water were ours indeed./ Clothes rustled and in your desire to touch them...”

When Azra Abbas later asked me to translate the entire poem, I consented without hesitation. Historically, long poems in Urdu were written in the form of the masnavi or the qasida and the marsiya. Most long and well-known masnavis are linear narratives that tell a story in verse. The marsiya evolved into a narrative of the tragedy of Karbala. The qasida, the panegyric, superfluous and pompous narrative was written for the sole purpose of pleasing the powerful of the time and other affluent patrons of art.

The poem is a reflection of a mind in turmoil, on a journey of trying to understand the vulnerability of life.”

Long poems have since been written, but in the Twentieth Century, the emerging sensibility also favoured contemporary and individualistic themes in such poems. These poems of the Twentieth Century were an obvious shift from the thematic repetition of the earlier era. Iqbal’s Masjid-i-Qurtuba and NM Rashed’s Hasan Kuzagar are among the most celebrated long poems of the Twentieth Century. Several other poets have also tested their skills in this genre and the practice goes on.

Sleep Voyages, as I mentioned earlier, is not a linear narrative. The lines connect, disconnect and reconnect within the poem. The entire poem is a reflection of a mind in turmoil, not entirely in a state of regret, but on a journey of trying to understand the vulnerability of life, the reality as opposed to the ideal, what is and what must be or could have been.

Iftikhar Jalib, in his preface, called it a dialectical experience or expression. I would not fully go with this idea. The poem contemplates and articulates opposing ideas, but there is no intention to seek an answer. It is rather a search, an elusive one, to unravel an enigma. The enigma is the contemporary mind, the modern life. The keenness of intellect gives birth to that enigma and the poet voyages through it, without reaching a destination.

The ambiguity may either disturb or intrigue the reader, depending entirely on who is reading the poem. The poem is divided into three parts, which the poet calls cantos. The original poem is laboriously punctuated, unlike most Urdu poems. Most of the punctuation in the translation matches the original. The ambiguity is caused by the frequent disconnect in the flow of meaning, the incongruity of the tenses and a repetition of the same state of mind, so that the poem moves in a circle, sometimes circles.

The spiralling journey, however, displays flashes of fascinating images as it revolves. The state of being is described through them. Most of these images are real, concrete and tangible. Each independent fragment of the poem is complete in itself, and a cluster of these fragments mirrors a collage of primarily visual images.

These images accentuate childhood memories, pleasures and pains of womanhood, the chain of want and desire, the world of dreams, the dark, dreary reality, the day-to-day drudgery, doubt, sense of loss, unanswered questions, but nothing moving towards death - all circling within the energy called life. The language is simple, the expression spontaneous. Although devoid of meter, the poem’s internal rhythm is compelling and consistent throughout.

Azra Abbas claims that this poem revealed to her the mystery of poetry. It can also be said that her first attempt at writing what she believed was poetry resulted in a unique work of art. A few years ago, Azra once again discussed with me the possibility of publishing a new edition of Sleep Voyages. I agreed. I reviewed my translation, wrote a new introduction and, at her suggestion, submitted the complete manuscript to her publisher as well.

On rereading the poem years later, I realised that my initial impression of it had not changed. Even after 25 years, Sleep Voyages remains markedly different from Abbas’s later work, now published in five volumes. Her subsequent poems are generally shorter, more internalised and contemplative and formally more coherent. Receipt of the revised manuscript was acknowledged in 2020.

I had earlier shared my complete English translation of the book with Azra Abbas and, during that process, revised the working title from Voyages of Sleep to Sleep Voyages. I waited thereafter for further communication.

In September 2025, I learnt that a book titled Sleep Journeys by Azra Abbas, translated by Daisy Rockwell, had been published. I subsequently obtained a copy and read it closely.

In my view, the published English text does not read as an independent rendering of the original Urdu. It appears to bear a sustained and striking resemblance to my earlier translation. Given the lack of any communication regarding my manuscript or the revised title, this has raised serious ethical concerns for me as a translator. As a result, my own translation, Sleep Voyages, will now not be published.

*This statement reflects the writer’s account.

The writer is a poet and a translator.