“Words are, to me, a way of understanding truth”: An hour of history and poetry at ULAB

Students at the University of Liberal Arts, Bangladesh (ULAB) crowded into a packed classroom on a winter morning on Sunday, November 30, awaiting the start of a program that would be part interview, part poetry reading. "Meet the Poet: Shaheen Dil—In Conversation with Dr Mushira Habib" organised by the Department of English and Humanities was an hour-long dive into the life and work of poet Dr Shaheen Dil, a Bangladeshi writer and retired academic, banker, and consultant living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The program began with an introduction by Professor Imran Rahman of the School of Business as a close family friend of Dil's and a key figure in facilitating the event. Afterwards, two students from the department performed two poems each from Acts of Deference(2016) and The Boat-Maker's Art(2024), Dil's first two published collections. Next, the poet herself read from her newest publication, Letters to My Younger Self, reciting Letters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 13, and 31.
The book itself, as described by Dil, is part memoir in poetry. It is an exploration of memories and incidents from a number of key parts of her life from Old Dhaka in 1954 to New Jersey in 1973, all addressed to her younger self by her childhood nickname 'Choity'. These poems ranged from some of her earliest memories of a childhood spent in East Pakistan—a political rally at Armetola Maidan with her father, her first lesson in languages, childhood iftars—to burning unwanted poems on a bridge in Poughkeepsie, and revealed insights into a life lived broadly and deeply. 
Following the readings, the titular conversation began, led by Dr Habib, starting off with questions on how Dil began writing and what ignited her passion for poetry. The discussion covered her switch from writing in Bangla to writing in English, how she came to start publishing her work after her husband discovered several of her poems 20 years ago, the significance of the places she writes about, and more.
Afterwards, the talk moved towards her latest book—Letters to My Younger Self(2025), and Dil discussed being inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet (1929), unpacking events from her childhood only understood later in life through Choity, and how she mainly wrote the book for an audience of only her two children. 

To conclude the talk, Dil spoke about how she uses poetry as a means of understanding the world, fitting into the fast-paced and white-male-dominated world of finance in America as a woman of colour, and her literary career post-retirement.The event concluded with audience questions, an additional handful of poem recitations by students and then Dil herself, and finally, with closing remarks by Professor Kaiser Haq, Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities.

Arwin Shams Siddiquee is dreaming of a post-deadline world. They also intern for DS Books & Literature.