اردوشاعری میں نظیراکبر آبادی بحیثیت عوامی شاعرمقبول ہیں۔وہ بحیثیت شاعراپنے زمانے میں بھی مقبول تھے اور آج بھی مقبول ہیں۔نظیراکبر آبادی کو ان کے عہد میں ایک خاص لوگوں کا طبقہ جوخود کو شعروادب کا پارکھ ساجھت تھا،وہ نظیر کے کلام کو اچھا نہیں سمجھتا تھا،لیکن نظیر کا کلام عوام میں اس قدر مقبول تھا کہ لوگ انھیں عوامی شاعر کہنے لگے۔نظیراکبر آبادی نے اپنے کلام میں ایسی عام باتوں کو موضوع بنایا جن کواب تک شاعری میں نہیں پیش کیا گیا تھا۔عام بول چال کی زبان میں،ان ہی کے لہجہ اور اسلوب میں ان ہی کے مسائل کو نظیر نے بڑی راونی سے اپنے کلام میں پیش کیا ہے۔اس کتاب میں نظیر اکبرآبادی کے کلام کا انتخاب شامل ہے۔ان کے کلام میں تنوع اور رنگا رنگی ہے۔ان کی شاعری میں دال،روٹی،آدمی،چولہا،منقا،موٹھ جیسے عام موضوعات کا احاطہ کرتی ہے۔ اس انتخاب میں عیدالفطر،شب برات،بسنت،راکگی،مفلسی،کوڑی نامہ،چپاتی نامہ،بنجارانامہ،آدمی نامہ،موت،توکل، دنیا وغیرہ تمام عام موضوعات پر مبنی نظمیں شامل ہیں۔

Syed Wali Mohammad, known as Nazeer Akbarabadi, is the only poet of his kind in Urdu for a variety of reasons. He was born in 1735 in Delhi. There was huge celebration at his birth as he was the only male child of his parents born after twelve daughters. He was brought up with great care and his mother took him to Agra when Delhi fell into bad days.

Nazeer received his early education in Agra. He belonged to a prosperous family and led his childhood and early life in comfort. Following the usual practice of the day, he trained himself as a soldier. He was deeply interested in sports also. When it was the time to pick on a profession for earning a livelihood, he chose to be teacher and started teaching children at Mathura. It is said that he was a teacher to six children of Raja Vilas Rao. Later, the raja of Bharatpur and the nawab of Lucknow, Wajid Ali Shah, wanted to enrol him in their courts but Nazeer did not agree to leave his place.

Nazeer was a contemporary of Meer, Sauda, Jurat, Insha, and Mushafi who stood as the vanguards of classical Urdu poetry with ghazal being nourished as the most prestigious form of poetical expression. Nazeer opened up entirely new avenues for Urdu poetry as he chose his material from life brilliantly spread all around. There is hardly any aspect of secular life that did not engage his attention. His wrote poems on all religious festivals, communal events, carnivals, sports, hobbies, and scenes and scenarios of common life which none had done before him. He evolved a diction that too entirely new for the kind of poems he wrote. There is a general misconception that Nazeer wrote only on the folk life and its various manifestations but he also wrote highly sophisticated, persianised, and creatively rich ghazals which find him a place among the elitist poets of Urdu.