Excerpt from the Daily Star, an English Daily with wide circulation
 
Poet Shamsur Rahman was yesterday adorned with the First "SAARC Writers Award for Lifetime Excellence" amid cheers and applause of about one hundred poets and writers of the region and a select gathering in the city. The prestigious award was handed over to the poet at the opening session of the three -day Third SAARC Writers’ Conference of the Sufia Kamal auditorium of the National Museum. Eminent Writer and Founder Chairperson of Academy of Fine Arts and Literature of India Ms. Ajeet Cour handed over the Award to the poet. Handing over the award, she said, "To know Shamsur Rahman is to know his people and their struggle for liberation and emancipation." The award carries a citation and cash equivalent to Takas 2,23,000. Emotion-choked Shamsur Rahman, while receiving the award, paid deep tributes to his predecessors, saying he is greatly indebted to those great writers and poets for his today’s success. He urged the Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature to arrange more translations of the works of the writers and poets of the region to popularize those regionally and globally.

In India, the Conference received coverage in the Hindustan Times. Ms Kum Kum Chadha, Coordinating Editor, Hindustan Times wrote:

A SOUTH ASIAN VISION

The Third SAARC Writers Conference was designed to provide a platform for an interaction among writers from the region. Although Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature is a little less than a year and three conferences old, including the recent one in Bangladesh, preparations are on for the forthcoming one in Maldives, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. A colossal task but one which Ajeet Cour has vowed to complete. What makes it all the more formidable is her determination to ensure that the long-term proposals become a reality. Of these, the writers-in-residence programme and the creation of a website are on track. That several proposals have taken concrete shape is what distinguishes Cour’s initiative from many others – which have, at best, remained exercises in fund raising or wooing the media: whether they are friendship forums with Pakistan, peace delegations or the cause of majority women. It is, therefore, not without reason that when Cour was described as "mad" by her friends, she did not protest: "Creative people like me are mad dreamers. They are peddlers of dreams… it is these dreamers who make miracles happen…"

THE Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature award was baptized in controversy. The nascent Academy of Fine Arts and Literature – founded by eminent writer Ajeet Cour – last week found itself the unwitting target of a group of young Bangladeshi poets after conferring the first ever SAARC Literary Award for Lifetime Achievement to the Bangladesh poet, Shamsur Rahman. The consensus of the young poets was that while he was the "right poet" to be honoured, he was certainly not the best. Others like Al Mahmud, who is considered to be a "born poet," was not even in the reckoning – for nationalism reigns supreme in Bangladesh and everything else is subservient to it. That’s why even the students of Al Mahmud’s school of poetry agree that the septuagenarian poet is "a bit derailed." This is because he has reportedly lent his voice to what are seen as fundamentalist forces in the liberated Bangladesh. "He has lost his legitimacy because fundamentalism has overtaken his poetic genius," said poet Farhad Mazhar, who – like many other front-ranking young poets – was not invited. The Bangladesh Organising Committee had, either by accident or design, crowded them out – much to the dismay of the parent body. Consequently, many of them forewarned Ajeet Cour not to let the otherwise credible conference be hijacked by those who, though on the periphery of the literary world, were certainly not its stalwarts. Cour, on her part, listened to one and all: "I am going with a beginning bowl from country to country, knocking at the door of every creative writer, seeking their literary works. My aim is to include and not exclude."