Syed Buali Gillani

Syed started writing poetry after the 2005 earthquake which left his home town Muzaffarabad Azad Kashmir in ruins, he lost his only sister, home, relatives and close friends at the age of 10. Syed was interested in learning languages, history and philosophy at a young age. He volunteered to work as an editor’s assistant for ‘Daily Mahasib’ “a prominent newspaper in the city of Muzaffarabad AJK” when he was in high school, he says “it proffered him a unique adroitness”, to look at one word with a thousand different lenses. Syed is a masterful Urdu poet; he was given a ‘Faiz Ahmad Faiz’ award in the “AJK literature festival” by the education minister of Muzaffarabad at age 14 for writing a poem on “the freedom of Pakistan”. His Urdu and Farsi poems have been published in newspapers all over Pakistan for years, he also writes songs. Syed studied Economics in Pakistan before moving to London to join his family, he then went to college and then university to study law afterwards, he dropped out of Law school to study Psychology instead but the same year at age 22 he was blessed with a daughter, half English and half Pakistani. So, as confusing as his life sounds, he says: “I like to brush it with the paint of there’s no place or style of people I haven’t yet met, which is the vigorous voyage through which the world has bequeathed its allegories to me”. At the moment Syed works many odd jobs in London in pursuit of his dreams. He plans to write more poetry books next and publish his novels.