Hassanal Abdullah

Hassanal Abdullah (born: April 14, 1967), a Bangladeshi-American poet, was born in a village of Gopalgonj, Bangladesh. He introduced sonnets with seven-line stanza and abcdabc efgdefg rhyming scheme.
Life as a writer
He started his writing career while he was in 8th grade. As a student of Rajandra College, Faridpur, he continued his writing, which has later flourished while studying at the University of Dhaka. He is the author of 19 books including 11 collections of poetry and Breath of Bengal, a bilingual collection, published from CCC, Marrick, New York. shabdaguchha, a bilingual poetry journal, founded and edited by Hassanal Abdullah himself since 1998. He was a 2007 honorable mention of the Queens Borough, New York, Poet Laureate. On May 4, 2007, in a citation given to the poet, the Queens Borough President, Helen Marshall, wrote, "As a prolific poet and editor of the English Bengali Quarterly, Shabdaguchha, you have built a solid bridge between poets from East and West, here in the most multi-ethnic county of the world."
While in Dhaka, he was involved with Khalaghor, Fulkuri, Shaplakuri and started contributing to the supplements of the Daily Shangbad, Daily Bangalar Bani, Daily Khabor and magazines like Shisu, Fulkuri etc. Later he started contributing to the literary supplements of some renowned Daily's such as Daily Ittafaq, Daily Jugantor etc.
Hassanal Abdullah moved to the United States in 1990. He kept on contributing to the supplements he already contributed while living in Dhaka as well as some of the magazines such as Jignasa and Desh published from Kolkata. He translated numbers of Bengali poets including Ahsan Habib, Shamsur Rahman, Al Mahmud, Shaheed Quaderi and Humayun Azad into English, and some American poets such as Stanley Kunitz
and Gerald Stern into Bengali. Here he contributed his poetry written originally in English and in translation to some magazine like the Paterson Literary Review, LIPS, etc., and web journals like Poetrybay. He has been among close to 200 other poets/performers who went onstage to celebrate New Year's Day Annual Spoken Word Extravaganza at Bowery Poetry Club. In 2008, he also published a special issue of Shabdaguchha focusing the extravganza where the founder and orgnizer, Bruce Weber wrote, "This special selection reveals the rich diversity of styles and voices that are heard at the event, and I would like to thank Hassanal Abdullah, editor of Shabdaguchha, for making this a reality."
He was also published in the Long Island Sound: An Anthology of Poetry in the year 2008 and 2009
as a significant contributor.
"Abdullah at once manages to maintain a Romantic confidence in the imagination, a modernist irony as to the imagination's limits, and a postmodern sense of the imagination as a construct" said Nicholas Birns, a part-time associate teaching professor of English at Eugene Lang College, the New School, New York.
Prof. Birns first wrote it for the amazon.com web site; it was later published in New Works Review.
Also, it has been noted by Jyotirmoy Datta, highly notable critic of Bengali Poetry, that "Hassanal Abdullah is the new spark from the soil of Bengal (pg 96)."
Books
Poetry
*Acobinsho Shatabdir Agay (Before the 21St Century), Lata-Pata Prokashani, Dhaka, 1993
*Golaper Nam Tumi (Rose as You are), Dhaka Prokason, Dhaka, 1994
*Shakunara Bhalo Achha (Vultures are Well), Agamee Prokashoni, Dhaka, 1996
*Sonnetguchha O Onnaya Kobita (Sonnets and Other Poems), Preeti Prokason, Dhaka, 1996
*Swatantra Sonnet (Swatantra Sonnets), Bisaka Prokashoni, Dhaka, 1998/Shabdaguchha Press, 2nd ed. 2004
*Andherer Saman Bayas (Old as Darkness), Bud Publications, Dhaka, 2002
*Nokkhotro O Manusher Procchod (The Faces of Human Beings and Stars), Anayna Prokashoni, Dhaka, 2007
*Bori Gachha Chori Nacha (A Sparaw Dances on a Broi Branch), Shahittya Bikash, Dhaka, 2008
*Breath of Bengal, Translated by Nazrul Islam Naz, Cross-Cultural Communications, New York, 2000
*Ek Posla Somoy (A Glimse of Time), Shahittya Bikash, Dhaka, 2009
*Nirbachito Kobita (Selected Poems), Anayna, Dhaka, 2010
Collections of Essays
*Kobiter Chhando (Rhythms of Poetry), Bangla Academy, Dhaka, 1997
*Kobiter Janmodag (The Birth Mark of Poetry), Mowla Brothers, Dhaka, 2008
*Shaheed Quaderi: Somoyer Sampanna Swar (Shaheed Quaderi:The Perfect Voice of Time), Labu Bhai Foundation, Dhaka & New York, 2005
*Humayun Azad: Raktakto Kobir Mukh (Humayun Azad: A poet's Face in Blood), Shahittya Bikash, Dhaka, 2007
Novels
*Ahoto Mukul (Wounded Buds), Agamee Prokashoni, Dhaka, 1996
Poetry in Translation
*Biswha Kobitar Koyed Chhatra (A Synopsis of World Poetry), Shahittya Bikash, Dhaka, 2008
Travelogues
*Boimelay Etdin (Eight Days in the Book Fair), Anayna Prokashoni, Dhaka, 2009

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