The Narratives of Resistance in Mahmoud Darwish’s Unfortunately, it was Paradise: Selected Poems and Kazi Nazrul Islam’s The Poems of Kazi Nazrul Islam

This paper examines the manner in which political conflicts are represented in Mahmud Darwish’s his poetry collection Unfortunately, it was Paradise: Selected Poems and Kazi Nazrul Islam’s The Poems of Kazi Nazrul Islam. The question that guides this work is: how do Mahmud Darwish and Kazi Nazrul Islam project resistance in their respective collections of poems. It is hypothesized that on the backdrop of cause factors of the conflict and the suffering of the subjugated people, the poets project exile, resilience and defiance against occupation as strategies used by Palestinians and Bangladeshis in their resistance struggle. Using the Postcolonial theory and its concept of Resistance Literature as proposed by Barbara Harlow, the paper, which is divided into two parts, concludes that the fight between Israel and Palestine is a key aspect of Darwish’s poetry in the same way as the Bangladeshis fight against the British for independence is pivotal in Islam’s poetry; as they use their poems to show the sufferings of the conquered people due to these scuffles as well as their efforts in (re)gaining their freedom. The work highlights the manner in which Darwish and Islam use poetry as a form of personal as well as collective Palestinian and Bangladeshi resistance respectively; thereby projecting the narrative on the role of literature in social and political resistance.