Saadi Yousef
| Saadi Yousef | |
|---|---|
at PEN World Voices 2007
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| Native name | Arabic: سعدي يوسف |
| Born | 1934 Abu Al-Khaseeb |
| Nationality | Iraqi |
| Genre | Poetry |
| Literary movement | Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, Shathel Taqa, Abd al-Wahhab Al-Bayyati |
| Notable awards | Al Owais Prize |
Saadi Yousef (Arabic: سعدي يوسف) (born 1934 near Basra, Iraq) is an Iraqi author, poet, journalist, publisher, and political activist.[1] He has published thirty volumes of poetry and seven books of prose.[2]
Life
Saadi Yousef studied Arabic literature in Baghdad.[1] He was influenced by the free verse of Shathel Taqa and Abd al-Wahhab Al-Bayyati and was also involved in politics from an early age, At the time his work was heavily influenced by his socialist and pan-Arab sympathies but has since also taken a more introspective, lyrical turn. He has also translated many well-known writers into Arabic, including Oktay Rifat, Melih Cevdet Anday, Garcia Lorca, Yiannis Ritsos, Walt Whitman and Constantine Cavafy. Since leaving Iraq, Yousef has lived in many countries, including Algeria, Lebanon, France, Greece, Cyprus, and currently he resides in London.
In 2004, the Al Owais Prize for poetry was given to Yousef but was controversially withdrawn after he criticized UAE ruler Sheikh Zayed bin al-Nahiyan. In 2007 Yousef participated in the PEN World Voices festival where he was interviewed by the Wild River Review. In 2014, Yousef's poems were banned by the Kurdistan Regional Government in school books because of a poem, where he referred to Kurdistan as "Qardistan," which loosely translates to "Monkey-istan".
Bibliography
- Without an Alphabet, Without a Face: Selected Poems translated by Khaled Mattawa (Graywolf, 2002) ISBN 1-55597-371-X
Further reading
- Huri, Yair (2006) The Poetry of Sa’di Yûsuf: Between Homeland and Exile (Sussex) ISBN 978-1-84519-148-1
References
External links
- Listen to Saadi Yousef reading his poetry - a British Library recording, 4 March 2009.
- 3 poems at the Wayback Machine (archived December 9, 2007)
- 3 poems
- Two poems
- The Fence a poem
- Spiral of Iraqi memory review of Without an Alphabet at Al-Ahram
- Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef on 'bullet censorship' at Socialist Worker
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