Hassanal Abdullah

Hassanal Abdullah, poet, novelist, critic and the author of 16 books including 8 collections of poetry, was born in a village of Gopalgonj, Bangladesh. From the beginning of his writing career, he established his own tone and voice. He has introduced sonnets with rhyming scheme abcdabc efgdefg and seven lines stanza pattern. He calls them Swatantra Sonnets, the second edition of the book with the same title was published in 2004. He also published a novel (1994), and a textbook on Bengali rhetoric and prosody,Kobitar Chhanda, (Bangla Academy, 1997). All of these were written in Bengali and published from Dhaka, except the bilingual collection, Breath of Bengal(2000), which was published by Cross-Cultural Communications, Merrick, New York, and was translated into English by Nazrul Islam Naz, a British-Bengali poet. Hassanal is the editor a bilingual (Bengali-English) poetry journal, Shabdaguchha, which is also available on the web: http://www.shabdaguchha.com. He regularly contributes to the major newspapers and journals published from Dhaka and Kolkota. He also contributed to some poetry magazines in the United States, such as LIPS, Paterson Literary Review, Poetrybay, Medicinal Purposes Literary Review, and Asbestos etc. He has been honored as the 'Centerpiece Poet' in the Year's End Issue, 2001, of the Medicinal Purposes Literary Review. Hassanal has also participated in various readings in the NYC area, including Barns and Noble bookstores, as a Feature Poet.

His most recent book is a 314-page epic, Nakhatra O Manusar prochhed (নক্ষত্র ও মানুষের প্রচ্ছদ), (Anayna, 2007) is written on the universe and life in it. He translated Charles Baudelaire, Stanley Kunitz, Nicanor Parra, Wislawa Szymborska and Gerald Stern into Bengali, Biswha Kobitar Koyed Chhatra (Shaitta Bikash, 2008) and Shaheed Quaderi, Shamsur Rahman, Humayun Azad and many more Bengali poets into English. Kobiter Janmodag (Mowla, 2008), is his collection of critical essays on poetry.

Mr. Abdullah has lived in New York City since 1990, where he works as a High School math (calculus) and computer teacher for the Department of Education. He also taught Calculus and Computers at Hunter College and Laguardia Community College.

He has been named the finalist for the 2007 Queens Borough Poet Laureate.

He is married with Naznin Seamon, who is also a poet and short story teller. They are the parents of their only son, Ekok Soubir, who is 13 days older than the 21st century.