Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

<B>Features</B>

Poetry International 2015 - poems from the Middle East

search

help

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Poetry International 2015

print this page





Southbank Centre’s biennial Poetry International festival was founded by Ted Hughes in 1967. The festival has traditionally been a place for poets to meet, debate and offer their perspectives on a changing world. During the first Poetry International the Cold War loomed large. Nearly half a century on, the conflicts and shifting geo-political fault lines that impact on all our lives today provide one of the central themes of the festival.

This year, there is a special focus on poets and poetry from the Middle East; including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Kurdistan, Iran, the Palestinian Territories and Syria – powerfully demonstrating poetry's enduring ability to anticipate and envision change and transcend barriers of censorship, prejudice and conflict.

We're using this opportunity to showcase some of the hidden gems from the Poetry Magazines site. Some of the poems deal with subjects we tend to associate with the Middle East, given the 21st century landscape we find ourselves in, such as war and bombings and invasions. But we also wanted to bring to light some of the simply beautiful pieces of writing from a part of the world where poetry (and poets) are so highly respected and treasured.

Let's start with two poems from The Journal, a small press with global content. These two poems were published in the 2005 Autumn issue and both look at conflict in their homelands. The first, by Zekria Ibrahimi, uses the traditional tale of Aladdin to examine war in Afghanistan:


'A Thousand and One Bombs'

The second is Pakistani poet Khalid Khan and looks at the subtleties of conflict and what remains after the battle:

in mindset of dictators
missions fly at midnight
to salvage lost prestige
hidden dangers can prevail
night of terror is stalemate
strong and weak can fail.

'Too Close'

Taking the idea of his country as war-ravaged, Kurdish-Iraqi poet Buland al-Haidari cleverly uses the television, symbolising the Western perception of events taking place there:



Another central theme of this year's Poetry International is the voice women are given through writing poetry in Middle Eastern countries. Although Rashida Islam is a Bengali poet raised in Bangladesh, her poem 'Question (for International Women's Day)', published in a 2001 issue of Modern Poetry in Translation, speaks for so many women worldwide, as its title suggests:


From the same issue of MPT magazine, also Bangladeshi-raised Shameen Azad pens a tribute to the voices of the Language Movement in 1952, when students were killed protesting the imposition of Urdu as the national language of Pakistan. This is layered with her consideration of her own female voice:



Jordanian poet Amjad Nasser is also featured in this issue of MPT, with a poem that questions identity and how traditional ways of life can exist alongside the inevitable future of a globalised world:



Poetry has always been revered in Persian culture so we decided to bring this feature to a close with some examples of beautiful Iranian writing. The first is the oldest, dating back to 10th century. These quatrains were translated by Yann Lovelock and appeared in an issue of Oasis from 1975:



Returning to the theme of voice seen in previous poems here, Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad appears in a 2004 issue of MPT:



Ziba Karbaasi, an Iranian poet, also considers her voice and uses it to great poetic effect in an issue of MPT from 2001: 

'Sigh Poems'

Lastly, Shadab Vajdi reflects on the sorrows of Iran and the history of its land, also published in MPT in 2001:



'Closed Circuit'


These are just a selection from the hundreds of poems on the site, which you can browse by magazine or search by subject from our advanced search here.

Back to top