Anthology of Contemporary Kurdish Poetry
Harold Pinter
Kurdistan Solidaruty Committee
The suffering of the Kurdish people gave birth to these poems. What they express, however, is not only pain and sorrow but resistance — an absolute determination to survive appalling persecution. The suppression of the Kurds is a brutal and largely ignored outrage of shocking proportions. These poems are naked, passionate, vivid and arresting. They spring from direct and immediate experience. This is a deeply moving anthology.
Contents
Photographs / I
Foreword by Harold Pinter / I
Introductıon by Sheri Laizer / II
About The Poets / VI
Sherko Bekas / 1
from Small Mirrors:
Land
The Gun
In my Country
Comparison
The Seeds
Rabun Belengaz / 7
North-West by South-East
STC’s Ghost and the Critic
Waking in the Dark
Azad Dilzar / 11
My City
Marif Omar Gul / 14
Life and Death
New Year Feast and Freedom
Latıf Halmat / 16
Nazim Hikmet talks with Humanity
The poem which ends, ends not
Adar Jiyan / 20
A Letter from Prison
I am on a Journey
Mohammed Khaki / 24
Bombardment
Butterfly Sleep
Homesickness
My Wish
Kamal Mırawdelı / 27
Martyr
Mother, you are not Winter
A Song for the Departure of Siyamand
Abdullah Pashew / 31
The Unknown Soldier
Vigilance
Rafıq Sabır / 33
Where have you come from?
Eva
The Road of the Gun
Farhad Shakali / 37
Kurdistan: the Land of Blood
Shahın B Sorekli / 40
Do you know where Kurdistan is?
The Nightly Visits
Newroz
S.T. / 47
Karnveli Hill (How I love these mountains)
Poem dedicated to the martyr, Beritan, by
a woman guerrilla and friend, signed S.T.
Photographs
1. Kurdish woman and her children who fled from Turkish bombing attacks to south Kurdistan. (May 1994 Richard Wayman)
2. Kurdish youth learning Kurdish folk dance in a basement in Istanbul. They could have gone to prison for this. (September 1991 Ed Kashi)
3. Kurdish women at demonstration in London against the massacre of the Turkish army in Kurdistan. (July 1991 Carolyne Austin)
4. Kurdish woman gives victory salute, Kurdish New Year celebrations, Barfi, northwest Kurdistan. (March 1993 Richard Wayman)
5. After the bombing of Lice. (November 1993 Mark Campbell)
6. Yildiz Alpdogan, a Kurdish woman in the dock of the State Security Court in Diyarbakir, charged for ‘terrorism’ who was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment, (summer 1991 Ed Kashi)
7. One of her six ‘disappeared’ sons, Saddam’s ‘Anfal’, where 180 000 ‘disappeared’ from Qushtapa camp in south Kurdistan. (Martin Pope)
8. After the exodus: displaced children in south Kurdistan. (Martin Pope)
9. Kurds celebrating Newroz (New Year). (March 1994 Peter Grant)
10. Kurdish women guerrillas. 18-year-old Jaiyan (pictured left; her name means‘Life’) was killed in the spring of 1994 in a mountain camp on the Turkey/Iraq border. (July 1992 Richard Wayman)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Poems translated from Kurmanji Kurdish
by Andrew Penny and Baran Rizgar
I am on a Journey, A Letter from Prison, Kanweli Hill
Poems translated from Sorani Kurdish
by Kamal Mirawdeli
Land, The Gun, In my Country, Comparison, The Seeds, My
City Life and Death, New Year Feast and Freedom,
Nazim Hikmet talks with Humanity, The poem which ends,
ends not, Martyr, Mother you are not Winter,
A Song for the Departure of Siyamund, The Unknown Soldier,
Vigilance, Where have you come from?,
Eva, The Road of the Gun, Kurdistan: the Land of Blood.
Poems translated from Sorani Kurdish
by Mohammed Khaki and Sara Macdonald
Bombardment, Butterfly Sleep, Homesickness, My Wish
Editors
Estella Schmid, Sheri Laizer and Kamal Mirawdeli
Typesetting and cover design
Philip Loxton
Cover photograph
N Kasraian, Kurdistan, Oriental Art Publishing, Sweden (Details of ancient designs on Chikh or the straw mat. Each of the straws is adorned with colourful wool before being woven into a mat. To create designs radiating the real life and a view of the existence which has taken roots in the forgotten history of the tribe.)
Foreword
Harold Pinter
The suffering of the Kurdish people gave birth to these poems. What they express, however, is not only pain and sorrow but resistance — an absolute determination to survive appalliflg persecution. The suppression of the Kurds is a brutal and largely ignored outrage of shocking proportions. These poems are naked, passionate, vivid and arresting. They spring from direct and immediate experience. This is a deeply moving anthology.
Introduction
Sherı Laizer
As the 20th century comes to a close, Kurdish literature and poetry is experiencing a vital regeneration comparable to a renaissance. Undismayed by the repression and undeterred by the prohibitions and bloodshed in Kurdistan, the Kurdish people continue their struggle for the lawful recognition of their rights, the defence of their culture and their very existence. They defend their lives with two powerful weapons: language and the armed struggle. Poems, songs, a flood tide of new books on Kurdish life and history reach out across the generations and maintain the continuity of identity against all odds, inspiring pride in the past and hope in the future. This cultural resurgence sustains the Kurdish momentum to resist the hidden war which rages in the villages and mountains of their homeland.
In making our selection for this short anthology of Kurdish poetry, we looked for certain qualifying features: the poets should all be living poets writing at the time of our selection; they should be poets who had broken with the old classical forms of Kurdish poetry and whose imagery was immediate, less reliant on symbolism than the preceding generations. This would make the poems in translation more accessible to English readers. The poets and their poems would originate from the four main parts of divided Kurdistan — Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria — even if the writers had been forced into exile on account of their work or because of their loyalty to their Kurdish roots.
The poems chosen for this anthology have been selected on their individual merit and counterbalance each other. The work of well-known poets sits beside the work of other younger or newer poets whose reputations have still to be established. We also wished for the poems to cover the most essential aspects of Kurdish life at this period; endurance and commitment, side by ...
Harold Pinter
Anthology of Contemporary Kurdish Poetry
KSC
Kurdistan Solidaruty Committee
Anthology of Contemporary Kurdish Poetry
Yashar Ismail
Published by
Kurdistan Solidarity Committee
and Yashar Ismail
44 Ainger Road
London NW3 3AT
tel/fax 071-586 5892
© December 1994
ISBN: 0 9524991 0 X
We gratefully acknowledge the financial
assistance of the London Arts Board
