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The Homeland’s an Ocean

Mir Taqi Mir

Translated by Ranjit Hoskote

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LWB1627

‘Like the whirlpool, still centre of a giddy circling,
the homeland’s an ocean that scatters us in all directions.’ – Mir Taqi Mir (1723–1810)

Mir, one of the greatest Urdu poets, lived through extraordinarily turbulent times in a Delhi besieged by marauders, and in exile elsewhere in North India. By the time he died, aged eighty-seven, he had witnessed a long era of violence and chaos. Yet, through it all, he crafted the most exquisite poetry, shaping the Urdu language from the resources of Khari Boli, Persian and Brajbhasha. A thoughtful selection of 150 of his asha’ar or couplets by Ranjit Hoskote, The Homeland’s an Ocean reveals a far more political Mir than we know, a many-sided poet of melancholia, irreverent humour, love and audacious social vision. Hoskote’s fresh, contemporary translation brings Mir’s poetry back to a world that needs such a passionately urgent voice. Framed by the translator’s substantial introduction to Mir’s life and his literary, linguistic and political contexts, this book invites readers to look through a unique eighteenth-century lens at our current crises of homeland, identity and belonging.

Mir Taqi Mir

Mir Muhammad Taqi, known as Mir Taqi Mir, was an Urdu poet of the 18th-century Mughal India and one of the pioneers who gave shape to the Urdu language itself. He was one of the principal poets of the Delhi School of the Urdu ghazal and is often remembered as one of the best poets of the Urdu language.

Ranjit Hoskote

Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, cultural theorist, translator, and independent curator. His collections of poetry include Central Time (Penguin, 2014), Jonahwhale (Penguin, 2018; in the UK, by Arc, as The Atlas of Lost Beliefs, 2020, which received a prestigious Poetry Book Society Recommendation), Hunchprose (Penguin, 2021), and Icelight (Wesleyan University Press & Penguin, 2023). He is the author of the acclaimed translation of a 14th-century Kashmiri woman mystic’s work, I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded (Penguin Classics, 2011) and, more recently, of the poetry of the great 18th-century Urdu poet, Mir Taqi Mir, The Homeland’s an Ocean (Penguin Classics, 2024). He is also the editor of the annotated critical edition, Dom Moraes: Selected Poems (Penguin Modern Classics, 2012).

Hoskote has been a Fellow of the International Writing Program, University of Iowa (1995) and writer-in-residence at Villa Waldberta, Munich (2003) and the Polish Institute, Berlin (2010), as well as researcher-in-residence at BAK/ basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht (2010 and 2013). In 2023, he was appointed to the Editorial Board of the Murty Classical Library of India, published by Harvard University Press. Hoskote has been honoured with the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Award, the Sahitya Akademi Translation Prize, the S H Raza Award for Literature, and the 7th JLF-Mahakavi Kanhaiyalal Sethia Award for Poetry. He co-curated the 7th Gwangju Biennale (2008) and was the curator, in 2011, of India’s first-ever national pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

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