Books
1st Book
Raat Samundar Khed
Raat Samundar Khed (Let’s Dance with The Night Sea) was published in 2002 by Kitab Trinjan, Lahore and poet Irfan Malik. It contained poetry of my student years especially of Engineering University Lahore Years 1995-2000.
2nd Book
Veeni Likhia Din
Veeni Likhia Din (A Day Etched on Your Wrist) was published in 2012 by Sanjh, Lahore . It contained poetry of the 1st dacade of my immigrant years. It was awarded best book of the year 2012 by Masud Khaddarposh Trust and was also awarded by Nanakana based Baba Guru Nanak Award Comittee and Sahiwal based Mahkaan Adabi Award Sangat.
3rd Book
Sejal
Sejal (Dampness) was published in 2017 by Sanjh, Lahore. It won pristigious STM award sanctioned by Ministry of Art and Culture, Punjab.
Poems in Gurmukhi
Awan Poems – Gurmukhi
My Punjabi Poems in Gurmukhi (Selection from my 1st two books Raat Samundar Khed & Veeni Likhia Din) is not yet published in East Punjab. Thanks to Mitram Manu Awasthy who did all the transliteration work few years back. I am making it available for my East Punjabi siblings. Few other poems published in East Punjab are linked below too.
2.Awan-Sumkali-Sahit-26May2014
“Mahmood Awan’s poetry is murraqqa — mosaic — of West Punjab’s landscape, history and its language. He is inheritor of our grand masters Peelu and Hafiz Barkhurdar.”
– Amarjit Chandan about Sejal
“Awan’s diction was woven into the rural landscape; it was easy and spontaneous. The poetry also shares the poet’s life journey and experiences he went through as a sensitive soul. His poetry carries unique metaphors and similes.”
– Nain Sukh on Sejal Book Launch
Mahmood’s poems come across as a highly creative endeavor. Mahmood’s love poems thankfully are free of impotent sense of loss and saccharine lyricism. The experience of overwhelmingly stormy moments of intimacy in his love poems takes you to the unknown known and the known unknown in the realm of ever unpredictable man woman relationship.
Mahmood is a dynamic poet who has a voice which is distinctly his own. Nimiety of passion running through his poems makes them full of aesthetic and cultural joy.
– Mushtaq Soofi for The Dawn
Awan’s poetry comes together like Seamus Heaney’s‘Personal Helicon’. His poems become the zeitgeist of present day Punjab and embody the crisis the Punjab is experiencing. His love poems are sensually material and materially sensual, they are a celebration of body and land. A poet who weaves a similar web is Pablo Neruda. Sejal
is a coming of age book of poetry, since it has helped Awan carve a permanentplace for himself in modern Punjabi poetry. His poems continue to amaze and enchant Punjabi readers. Awan has become the new face of modern Punjabi poetry.
– Zubair Ahmad for The News
It is something great that Awan would unveil a good quality book after every some four to three years.
He had so expressively described the emotion and feelings in the collection that my eyes started brimming with tears while reading his poems.
– Raja Sadiqulla on Sejal Book Launch
Mahmood Awan is a master artist. Veeni Likhia Din has given new life to the modern Punjabi Poetry. He talks to his beloved homeland through these poems in a tender and soft voice which is unique and delicate unlike Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s loud ‘Lucchi Dharti’. His dialogue with the mother land is that of a child who gets prettier and more charming as his insistance and determination grows!
– Saeed Bhutta on Veeni Likhia Din in Sangry
Contributions (Works quoted & referenced)
Year
2023 (TBC)
Vibrant and the Volatile; South Asia in Verse edited by Rachel Bari et al. (Macmillan Education, India)
Year
2022
Kanchan Kaya: Anthology of Modern Punjabi Love Poetry; Edited by Amarjit Chandan (Navyug, India)
Year
2021
Seeking Nanak edited by Paramjeet Singh et al.; (EduSikh Publications, India).
Year
2018
India, Empire, and First World War Culture: Writings, Images, and Songs by Santanu Das (Cambridge
University Press, 2018).
Year
2018
The Indian Empire At War: From Jihad to Victory, The Untold Story of the Indian Army in the First World War by George Morton-Jack (Little, Brown; 2018)
Year
2018
Legacies of the Homeland by Paramjit Singh (Notionpress, 2018)
Year
2017
San Santali (Poetry of 1947 edited by Amarjit Chandan); Navyug, 2017