Qudrat Hikmat

Qudrat Hikmat was born in 1925 in Sebzor, one of the old quarters of Tashkent. His mother, Muborak-aya, died in 1934 while he was still a child; his father made a living from farming and a craft. He went to secondary school in 1934–1944, and his first poems appeared in the school wall newspaper.

From 1945 his poems were printed in the magazines “Gulxan” and “Sharq yulduzi” and in the republic’s newspapers. The young poet was encouraged by Oybek and Quddus Muhammadiy. On Oybek’s advice he became, in 1947, the literary secretary of the celebrated bakhshi (epic singer) Islom-shoir Nazar oʻgʻli; literary scholars trace the folk intonation of his verse to those years.

His first collection, “My Homeland”, came out in 1950. In 1950–1953 he was a literary staff member of the newspapers “Lenin uchquni” and “Yosh leninchi”, and in 1957 he graduated from the evening department of the Tashkent Pedagogical Institute. From 1960 until his death he headed the children’s literature department of the fiction publishing house (later the Ghafur Ghulam Publishing House of Literature and Art). Colleagues remembered how hard he worked to get books by young poets into the publishing plan.

In the 1950s and 1960s he published books such as “Happy Children” (1951), “Prosperity” (1953), “Friendship” (1954), “The Three Friends’ Gift” (1957), “Alisher and the Book” (1962), “Soatjon’s Watch” (1964), “The Tortoises’ Attack” (1965) and “Wind the Hero” (1966). He also wrote the narrative poem “Child of the Chirchiq” (1961) and the verse “Tale of the Snake King and His Official the Wasp” (1963). A book of his poems in Russian translation, “Native Uzbekistan”, was published in Tashkent in 1955.

Hikmat’s main themes are the homeland, nature and the seasons, and children’s lives and upbringing — as in the poems “Morning”, “Mountain Landscape”, “What Season Is This?”, “Long Live the New Year” and “The Fir Tree We Planted”; “White Poplar or Blue Poplar?” and “The Chillak Game” are built on folk children’s game songs. The National Encyclopedia of Uzbekistan credits him with renewing the metre, stanza and rhyme of children’s poetry to suit a child’s mind. As a translator he rendered into Uzbek children’s verse by Vladimir Mayakovsky, Samuil Marshak, Sergey Mikhalkov, Aleksey Surkov, Mykola Bazhan, Agniya Barto and others.

In his last years he suffered from a severe kidney disease, and as it worsened he hurried to hand his publisher the manuscript of “A Talk with My Son”, a book of poems and narrative poems. Qudrat Hikmat died in Tashkent on 10 April 1968. “A Talk with My Son” came out in 1970, followed later by the collections “My Heart Is a Diamond” (1983) and “My Heart” (1986); in 1983 the Yosh Gvardiya publishing house brought out a book of his poems, tales and narrative poems in Russian translation, “Serdtse moyo almaznoye”.

His poems have been included in school textbooks and children’s anthologies. The literary scholar M. Qoʻshjonov devoted two books to him, “Quddus Muhammadiy and Qudrat Hikmat” (1969) and “Qudrat Hikmat” (1978). In April 2025 the Writers’ Union of Uzbekistan held a literary evening marking the centenary of his birth.