A Highbrow “Hijra”: Kaiser Haq in Conversation with Mohammad A. Quayum

Kaiser Haq (b. 1950)—described by Khush want Singh as “a jovial litterateur [with a] macabre sense of humour” and by Alamgir Hashmi as a master of “derisive imagery”—is arguably the most internationally renowned Bangladeshi poet in the English language. He began writing while in school, but his first two collections of poetry, Starting Lines: Poems1968–1975 and A Little Ado: Poems, came out in 1978. Haq has since published several volumes of poetry, including two Collected editions: Published in the Streets of Dhaka: Collected Poems 1966–2006 (Haq [2007]2017) and Pariah and Other Poems (Haq 2013). He also has a significant body of more recent and previously uncollected poems to his credit. His poems have appeared in several distinguished journals and anthologies, including London Magazine, The Arnold Anthology of Postcolonial Literatures, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, The Cambridge Review, Wasafiri and World Literature Written in English (WLWE)