Srinagar, Dec. 18 -- It may not be far-fetched to describe historical Kashmir as the "land of poets."

The nature of poetry in Kashmir is suffused with mysticism, existentialism, a yearning for the visaal (union) with the Divine, and a mournful elegy over firaaq (the pain of separation) from the beloved.

This descriptive typology of the nature of poetry in Kashmir may be a tad reductive. But in the main, barring the romantic poetry interlude of Rasool Mir Sahib, the politics-inflected poems of Mehjoor, and the eclectic genre of Rehman Rahi, in the modern periods this may be said to constitute the gravamen of our poetic genius.

But the travesty (or even tragedy) is that Kashmir may not produce poetic greats anymore.

We may actually ha...