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Jeet Thayil in New York
The distinguished Kashmir-born American poet Agha Shahid Ali, whose most recent book of poems Rooms Are Never Finished (WW Norton) was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Awards, passed away in the early hours of December 8.
Shahid, as his numerous acquaintances knew him, died at home surrounded by friends and family. He had been in a coma for two weeks, following a long battle against brain cancer, said nursing staff.
"His death was very peaceful," said Nurse Patricia Bruno. "He died at home and there were a lot of people around him, a lot of family."
Nurse Bruno was the weekend on-call supervisor at VNA Hospice during the time of Shahid's death. She saw him at around 10 pm on December 7 and then again at 2.30 am, when she pronounced him dead.
His funeral is scheduled to be held on December 10 in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Shahid's family requested that no flowers be sent to the funeral home. Instead they asked that contributions be made out to the Visiting Nurses Association Hospice Alliance of Hampshire County.
Born in New Delhi on February 4, 1949, Shahid grew up in Kashmir. He was educated at the University of Kashmir, Srinagar, and later at Delhi University.
He considered himself "a triple exile" from Kashmir, India and the United States, but he described himself as a "Kashmiri-American."
He earned a Ph.D. in English from Pennsylvania State University in 1984 and an MFA from the University of Arizona in 1985.
He was the author of seven collections of poetry, The Country Without a Post Office (1997), The Beloved Witness: Selected Poems (1992), A Nostalgist's Map of America (1991), A Walk Through the Yellow Pages (1987), The Half-Inch Himalayas (1987), In Memory of Begum Akhtar and Other Poems (1979) and Bone Sculpture (1972).
He edited Ravishing Disunities: Real Ghazals in English, translated a selection of Faiz Ahmed Faiz's poems, The Rebel's Silhouette: Selected Poems, and wrote a critical study, T S Eliot as Editor.
Shahid received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Ingram-Merrill Foundation and was awarded a Pushcart Prize.
He held teaching positions at Delhi University, Penn State, SUNY Binghampton, Princeton University, Hamilton College, Baruch College, the University of Utah and Warren Wilson College.
New York University announced it would establish an annual reading in his name.
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