Shahzad Ahmad

Shahzad Ahmad (1932–2012) was a Pakistani Urdu poet, psychologist and translator, and a prominent voice of the new Urdu ghazal. Born on 16 April 1932 in Amritsar, he migrated to Pakistan after Partition and took an MSc in Psychology (1956) and an MA in Philosophy (1958) from Government College, Lahore. He wrote about thirty books of poetry — including Sadaf, Jalti Bhujti Aankhein, Tuta Hua Pal, Utray Meri Khak par Sitar and Bichar Jane Ki Rut — alongside books on psychology, and translated non-Urdu poetry into Urdu. As director of Lahore's Majlis-e-Taraqqi-e-Adab he tended one of Pakistan's oldest literary libraries, and in the 1990s he received the Pride of Performance for his contributions to Urdu literature. He died in Lahore on 1 August 2012.