Empire, Split Ethnicities, and an Explosion of Poetry

Abstract

Guidelines to understanding the poetry of the Kurdish poet-prophet Salim Barakat (b. 1951, Qamishli, Syria) areto be found in a poem by his friend, the Palestinian poet-prophet Mahmud Darwish (b. 1941, al-Birweh,Palestine – d. 2008) – Laisa lil-Kurdi ila al-Rih [Ila: Salim Barakat] (The Kurd Has Only the Wind [For SalimBarakat]) ( (2004). For the benefit of the English-speaking reader, as Darwish‘s poem and Barakat‘s poetry (alsoin Arabic) have not previously been translated to English, I have included, in the body of this study, mytranslation of Darwish‘s aforementioned poem and various of Barakat‘s poems, namely: Niqabat al-Ansab(Lineage) (1970); Kama‟in fi al-Mun„atafat Killiha / Htam ma – Sihm (Ambushes at Turns / Conclusion – ASort of Arrow) (1985). I have appended the whole of Barakat‘s long poem Surya (Syria) (2014). The techniquesBarakat introduces into the art of writing modern Arabic poetry come from modern mainstream poetry, as wellas from his Kurdish and Persian background. Altogether his concept of history, which puts into sharp outline thenorm of the ancient and medieval world of empire, enters the poem-of-his-being, the ―work‖ as MauriceBlanchot describes it – and makes his chronicling unique. Discussion of the selected poems clarifies as to howBarakat became a poet-prophet, and describes the commitment he took on not only to the Kurdish nation, butalso to the entire Middle East.