Abduvali Qutbiddin

Abduvali Qutbiddin (born Abduvali Qutbiddinov) was born on 20 June 1960 in the city of Qarshi, Kashkadarya region. He was a grandson of the noted scholar Sheikh Qutbiddin Muhiddinov and grew up in a family of learned people.

From 1978 to 1983 he studied at the journalism faculty of Tashkent State University (now the National University of Uzbekistan). He then worked for the Samarkand newspaper “Zarafshon” and, from 1985, in Tashkent as an editor at the Ghafur Ghulam Publishing House of Literature and Art.

His first poetry collection, “Nayson”, appeared in 1988 with a foreword by Rauf Parfi; “Humo” (1989) and “Baxtli yil” (1991) followed. Critics count him among the modernists of Uzbek poetry: his verse is dense with imagery, layered, and asks for a close reading.

From the 1990s he held various posts at the Yozuvchi publishing house and later at the National Television and Radio Company of Uzbekistan, the Yangi Asr Avlodi publishing centre and the newspaper “Xalq so'zi”, where he worked to the end of his life.

His later books include “Xayol kechasi” (1994), “Sen va sen uchun” (1996), “Uzoqdan olisga” (2007), “Bor” (2011) and “Da'vat” (2014). He also wrote the poem “Ozodlik” (“Freedom”), devoted to independence.

He received the Usmon Nosir Prize of the Youth Union (1993) and the “Oltin qalam” (Golden Pen) award, won the “Eng ulug', eng aziz vatan” competition in 2018, and was awarded the Order of Friendship and the title of Honoured Journalist of Uzbekistan. He was a member of the Writers' Union of Uzbekistan, and several dissertations have studied his poetry.

Abduvali Qutbiddin died on 8 December 2019 aged 59, after more than two weeks in hospital. In 2020 the Ijod public foundation of the Writers' Union published a collection of his poems in its “So'z chamani” series.