Hassanal Abdullah
Hassanal Abdullah
About Hassanal AbdullahHassanal Abdullah (b. 1967) is Bangladeshi-American poet, novelist, critic, translator, and the author of 61 books, including 21 collections of poetry. Born in a village in Gopalgonj, Bangladesh, he has established a distinctive literary voice since the beginning of his career. His poetry has been translated into seventeen languages.Hassanal is the innovator of the Swatantra Sonnet, a form with the rhyme scheme abcdabc efgdefg and a seven-line stanza pattern. The fifth Bengali edition of Swatantra Sonnets (Nalonda, Dhaka, 2023) features 224 sonnets, while the second English edition, One Hundred Swatantra Sonnets (Dhauli Books, 2024), translated by the poet himself, was published in Odisha, India. In addition to poetry, Abdullah has published two novels and Kobitar Chhanda (Bangla Academy, 1997), a textbook on Bengali rhetoric and prosody, now in its third edition (Mawla Brothers, 2018). His epic poem Nakhatra O Manusher Prochhed (নক্ষত্র ও মানুষের প্রচ্ছদ, Ananya, 2007) spans 304 pages and explores the universe and human existence. Selected Poems: 1990–2010 was published by Ananya Prokashoni at the 2010 Dhaka Book Fair. His Collected Poems, Kobita Somogra (Vols. I–II, 560 pages each), were released by Ananya in 2019 and 2022. Several of his poetry collections have been translated, including: As a translator, Abdullah has brought into Bengali the works of Charles Baudelaire, Stanley Kunitz, Nâzım Hikmet, Tomas Tranströmer, Nicanor Parra, Wislawa Szymborska, and Gerald Stern (Bishwa Kobitar Koyek Chhatra, Shaitta Bikash, 2008). He has also translated Shaheed Quaderi, Shamsur Rahman, Humayun Azad, and other Bengali poets (38 of them) into English and published Contemporary Bangladeshi Poetry (2019). His Selected Essays (Nalonda, 2023) explore poetry, philosophy, the staggering existence of human beings, women’s emancipation, and modernist as well as postmodernist perspectives in literature. He is the editor of Shabdaguchha, an international bilingual (Bengali–English) poetry journal since 1998, also available online at www.shabdaguchha.com. In 2001, he established the Shabdaguchha Poetry Award, an international biannual honor. Recent winners include Kazimierz Burnat (2023), Amir Or (2021), Dariusz Tomasz Lebioda (2019), and Peter Thabit Jones (2017). The Shabdaguchha Laureate receives a $500 cash prize and a commemorative crest, with the winner selected by a four-member jury from poets published in Shabdaguchha over a two-year span. His work has appeared widely in Bangladesh, India, and abroad, in journals such as LIPS, Paterson Literary Review, Poetrybay, Medicinal Purposes Literary Review, The Seventh Quarry (UK), Krytyka Literacka, Hybrydy and LiryDram (Poland), Kyiv Magazine (Ukraine), Eviannews (Greece), Poezia (Romania), Naputonline.hu (Hungary), Immagine & Poesia (Italy), Poetry Journal (Vietnam), and KOLO (Croatia), etc. He has frequently read in the New York City area, including at Barnes & Noble bookstores, Walt Whitman Birth Place, Poet's House, and LIU Post as a featured poet. Abdullah’s international recognition includes being a finalist for Poet Laureate of Queens, New York (2007) and receiving the Homer European Medal of Poetry & Art at the International Silk Road Poetry Festival in Sichuan, China (2016). He has also participated in festivals in Greece (2019, 2025), Poland (2019, 2021, 2022, 2024), Mexico (2022, online), and India (2022, 2024), Kenya (2023), Morocco (2024), Guatemala (2025), and Macedonia (2025). Other honors include the Labubhai Foundation Award (2013) for his innovation in the sonnet form, the Ianicius International Prize of Klemens Janicki from the Polish Writers’ Union (2021) “for a great contribution to world poetry,” and a QCA/New York City Cultural Affairs translation grant, which supported the anthology Contemporary Bangladeshi Poetry (CCC & Feral Press, 2019). Most recently, he edited World Poetry Anthology (Darklight Publishing, 2023), featuring 229 poets from 59 countries. Since 1990, Abdullah has lived in New York City, where he worked as a high school mathematics and computer teacher for the Department of Education from 1998 until his retirement in 2024. He also taught Calculus and Computer Science at Hunter College and LaGuardia Community College. Abdullah is married to poet and short story writer Naznin Seamon. They have one son, Ekok Soubir, born in 2000, who graduated from St. John’s Law School in 2024. Whenever I cast my sight, I find her anew. The more I touch her the more she thrills in luster. I’m aware her body knows bird mythology. Her soft and smooth limbs are as tender as a vine; covering my slim body, licking my sinews, they glitter in the garden, blooming in clusters unfurl her hair and eyes and breasts and thighs on me. Talks ripple in the villages and out through the towns. Facebook waves them from one corner to another of the world, wriggling in the finest alphabets we wildly adorn. At evening parties with wine glasses toast a bliss. We quiver under a brown quilt sewn in leaves, as the rainstorms tremble further to wash our sweat, in icy dawns or warm sunsets. --SWATANTRA SONNET 158 Prizes/Honors: 2024: Paul Van Heyse International Prize in Outstanding Literatue and Literary Activities, Germany 2024: Art and Literature Club Medal, Wrocław, Poland 2024: Friends of the city of Polanica-Zdrój Medal, Poland 2024: Naji Naaman International Poetry Award in Creativity, Lebanon 2022: Crest, Hasumonir Patshala, Dhaka, Bangladesh 2021: Ianicius International Prize of Klemens Janicki, Poland 2019: Queens Art Council Translation Grant, New York, USA 2017: Crest of Honor, Poet's Fifth Birthday Celebration Committee, Dhaka, Bangladesh 2016: Homer European Medal of Poetry and Art, Poland 2015: Pushcart Nominee, New York, USA 2013: Lebubhai Foundation Award, New York, USA 2009: Pushcart Nominee, New York, USA 2008: Pushcart Nominee, New York, USA 2007: Queens Borough Poet Laureate finalist, New York, USA International Poetry Festivals: 2025: 64th Macedonia International Poetry Festival, Struga Poetry Evenings, Macedonia (August, 2025) 2025: 12th International Guatemala Poetry Festival, Guatemala (July, 2025) 2025: Fourth International Poetry Festival, Chalkita, Greece (April, 2025) 2025: Kolkata International Book Fair, Kolkata, India (Jan, 2025) 2024: 9th Odisha Art and Literature Festival, Odisha, India 2024: 21st Polish International Poetry Festival,Polanica-Zdrój, Poland 2024: 25th Morocco International Poetry Festival, held in five different cities, Morrocco 2023: Polish International Poetry Festival 2023: Kenya International Poetry Festival 2022: Odisha International Poetry Festival 2021: Mexico International Poetry Festival (virtual) 2021: Polish International Poetry Festival, Poznan, Poland 2019: Internatioanl Poetry Festival in Greece 2019: Polish International Poetry Festival 2016: Chinese International Poetry Festival |