Saiful Islam Khan, who used to write under the pen-name -Hayat Saif has passed away. He breathed his last at 12.15am on May 13 at United Hospital in the city. He was suffering from kidney and old-age complications. He was aged 76. A civil servant by profession, he was one of the major poets of Bangladesh and is identified with the prolific sixties. A profoundly modern poet, he immersed himself in the contemporary global literature as well as the culture and heritage of his own during his lifetime. Hayat Saif received Ekushey Padak in 2018.
He is also known as a literary critic and prolific prose-writer, who with an unusually rich vocabulary could express subtle topics in lucid language. His article In Search of Roots: The Situation in the Poetry of Bangladesh has been highly acclaimed for radical analysis of modern trends in Bengali poetry.
Hayat Saif attended the Dhaka University from where he received his M. A. degree in English literature in 1965. Later he received higher training on economic policy and tax-administration from institutions abroad. Retired in 1999 from government service, in the Customs and Excise Cadre, he joined the Finance Services in 1968 of the then Pakistan Superior Services.
Hayat Saif was born on the 16th of December, 1942 in Dhaka where his father was posted at that time as a government servant. Much of his youth passed in Rajshahi where his father the late Moslem Uddin Khan served in the Rajshahi University till the later part of the sixties.
He started to scribble rather early. He was a student of eighth grade (Class VIII) when he actually became conscious about it. The first published poems appeared in Shamokal, in 1962. But he actually got stuck-up with it during the university life. And when his poems began to appear in prestigious literary journals like Shamokal edited by Sikandar Abu Zafar and Purbamegha edited jointly by Zillur Rahman Siddiqi and Mostafa Nurul Islam, his emergence as a modern poet was confirmed. At one point, in the beginning, he was considerably influenced by Sudhin Dutta, one of the giants of the thirties. He admired Jibanananda Das, too, though the latter is not very discernible in his techniques.
His first book Santrashey Shahobaash (To Live in Violence) came out in 1984. As of now (1998), six-books of poetry by him have been published.
