Adnan Al-Sayegh was born in al-Kufa, Iraq in 1955. In the 1980s he was conscripted in the Iran-Iraq war and in 1993 his uncompromising criticism of oppression and injustice led to exile in Jordan and the Lebanon. In 1996 he published Uruk's Anthem - a book-length poem, one of the longest in Arabic literature - in which he articulated deep despair at the Iraqi experience. On its publication he was sentenced to death in Iraq and took refuge in Sweden. Since 2004 he has been living in exile in London.
Ten collections of his poetry in Arabic, among them Formations, Uruk's Anthem and Carrying his Exile under his Arm have been published and a further one is in press. He has said that in poetry he 'found a motherland, a refuge, a friend and a journey-companion' as well as a form of resistance.
Adnan has received several international awards, including the Hellman-Hammet International Poetry Award (New York 1996), the Rotterdam International Poetry Award (1997) and the Swedish Writers Association Award (2005).
This year he read at the StAnza poetry festival alongside his English translator, Stephen Watts. We are most grateful to him and to Stephen for permission to publish the poems on-line.
The poems which follow are all taken from Pages From The Biography Of An Exile translated by Stephen Watts and Marga Burgui-Artajo and published in Long Poem Magazine Issue 5, 2010/2011. We also include a poem from his recent pamphlet in English, The Deleted Part (Exiled Writers Ink 2009) in the PENning Courage magazine along with biographies of his translators.
You can find more information about Adnan and more of his poems at http://www.exiledwriters.co.uk/writers.shtml#Sayegh
Poems from Pages From The Biography Of An Exile
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I'll kick my socks toward the sky
in solidarity with those who don't have shoes
and I'll walk barefoot
feeling the muds of the street under my feet
staring at the faces of the glutted inside their
glass offices ...
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