Daud Haider ~ 21 February 1952 – 26 April 2025

Born in the district of Pabna (then East Pakistan), Daud Haider completed his college education from Dhaka and Kolkata, graduating from Jadavpur University. He was actively involved in the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 and started writing poems, plays and essays prolifically from his late teens and early twenties. He was the literary editor of Dainik Sambad in Dhaka and was forced to leave Bangladesh in 1974 after being imprisoned the year before for writing a poem that was perceived to be critical of religion. He lived in exile at first in Kolkata and then in Berlin.

Writers Workshop published his poems in translation, Holding an Afternoon and a Lethal Firearm (translated by another author of ours, Lila Ray) in 1981. We share a poem from this collection that feels almost prescient when read today. Our thoughts are with his loved ones and all his readers who were, and continue to be, inspired by his writing.