Muhammad Yusuf and his poems

Muhammad Yusuf was born on 26 April 1954 in the village of Qovunchi in Marhamat district of Andijan region in a simple working family. He graduated from the Russian Language and Literature Institute in Tashkent in 1978; his first poems were printed in 1976 in a weekly newspaper. He worked in various places, including the Literature and Art publishing house in the years of Erkin Vohidov’s leadership, and from 1997 was deputy chairman of the Writers’ Union. His first collection of poems came out in 1985, followed by dozens of collections such as “Bulbulga bir gapim bor”, “Iltijo”, “Uyqudagi qiz”, “Ishq kemasi” and “Erka kiyik”, and the narrative poems “Osmonning oxiri” and “Qora quyosh”. In the years of independence he wrote sincere poems such as “Vatanim”, “Xalq bo‘l, elim” and “O‘zbekmomo”, many became songs, and in 1998 he was given the title “People’s Poet of Uzbekistan”. He died of a heart attack on 31 July 2001 while reading poems on a creative trip in Karakalpakstan, having lived 47 years.