Serena Hotels hosted the fifth edition of Mehfil-e-Sukhan on Saturday evening, bringing together some of Pakistan\u2019s most distinguished poets for its annual mushaira at the Islamabad Serena Hotel.
\nHeld under Serena\u2019s Cultural Diplomacy Initiative, the evening honoured one of the region\u2019s oldest literary traditions, and the enduring power of Urdu verse to bring people together across generations, regions and backgrounds.
\nPresided over by Abbas Naqvi and Shakeel Jazaib, the mehfil featured Kishwar Naheed, Iftikhar Arif, Anwar Shaoor, Abbas Tabish, Izhar ul Haq, Hamid Ateeq Sarwar, Haris Khaleeq, Ahmed Salman, Wasi Shah, Adnan Baig, Shakeel Jazib, Ashfaq Nasir, Saima Aftab, Rehman Faris, Zarnigar Abbas and Saba Uddin Hunzai. Spanning the classical and the contemporary, their readings reflected the range of Urdu poetry and its continuing ability to speak to the present.
\n\u201cPoetry has always been a meeting place. For five years, Mehfil-e-Sukhan has opened Serena\u2019s doors to the poets who give voice to Pakistan, and to the audiences, from Pakistan and beyond, who come to listen. At its heart, cultural diplomacy is simply that: an invitation to sit together and share in something enduring,\u201d said Mr. Aziz Boolani, Global CEO of Serena Hotels.
\nSince its first edition in 2022, Mehfil-e-Sukhan has become a fixture of the capital\u2019s cultural calendar: a setting in which celebrated poets and appreciative audiences meet in the spirit of the traditional mushaira.
\nIts fifth edition reaffirms Serena\u2019s commitment to keeping Urdu\u2019s literary heritage alive.
\nMehfil-e-Sukhan forms part of Serena\u2019s wider support for literature and the arts across Pakistan, including the Lahore Literary Festival and the Quetta Literary Festival, which give writers, poets and thinkers a platform to share ideas with wider audiences.
\nThrough its Cultural Diplomacy Initiative, Serena opens its spaces to Pakistan\u2019s artists, writers and thinkers, and to the communities, at home and abroad, who come to meet them. It reflects a belief that understanding between people often begins with shared culture, and that Pakistan\u2019s rich and plural heritage deserves to be celebrated, preserved and heard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Serena Hotels hosted the fifth edition of Mehfil-e-Sukhan on Saturday evening, bringing together some of Pakistan\u2019s most distinguished poets for its annual mushaira at the Islamabad Serena Hotel. Held under Serena\u2019s Cultural Diplomacy Initiative, the evening honoured one of the region\u2019s oldest literary traditions, and the enduring power of Urdu verse to bring people together …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":105613,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105601"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105625,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105601\/revisions\/105625"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}