Artscape on Al Jazeera
Excerpt, editing by Carolyn Bennett
Artscape is a series that delves into the soul of the Middle
East with intimate profiles of poets who seek to interpret and inspire.
Poetry in this region long dominated by authoritarian
regimes is the medium for expressing people’s hopes, dreams and frustrations.
Poets became historians, journalists, entertainers, even revolutionaries.
“Poetry
in the Middle East lives and breathes as in few other places.”
 |
| Egyptian Poet Ahmed Fuad Negm Poets of Protest – Writing a Revolution |
AFRICA: Egypt
Egyptian folk hero
Ahmed Fouad Negm, called the
‘voice of the
revolution’…:
When
I love I love really well.
When I eat I eat really well.
When I write I write
really well.
 |
| Syrian Poet Hala Mohammad Poets of Protest – Waiting for Spring |
ASIA: Syria
Exiled in Paris,
Syrian poet Hala Mohammad despairs for her country
as the Syrian crisis
deepens.
The
most beautiful poem written this year is ‘the Syrian people will not be
humiliated.’
ASIA: Lebanon
 |
| Lebanese Poet Yehia Jaber Poets of Protest – Laughter Is My Exit |
Former communist
fighter Yehia Jaber journeying across Lebanon now battles
for change only with
words.
All
revolutions begin as poetry.
ASIA: Iraq
 | ||
| Iraqi Poet Manal al-Sheikh
Poets of Protest – Fire Won’t Eat Me Up
Scottish Doc Institute |
For Manal al-Sheikh,
writing in Iraq is deadly, so she struggles
to inspire via
Facebook and Twitter from snowy Norway.
I
really hate to say this but this is the truth; there is no Iraq now.
ASIA: Heart of Middle East conflict:
PALESTINE
 |
| Palestinian Poet Mazen Maarouf Poets of Protest – Hand Made http://www.scottishdocinstitute.com/films/poets-of-protest-hand-made/
Wandering Palestinian poet Mazen Maarouf grew up in Lebanon,
His outspoken work forced him into double exile in to Iceland.
The poet’s only security is his notebook.
The cause of Palestine doesn’t need emotions anymore, we need minds.
AFRICA: Western Sahara
Sahrawi nomad ‘poet of the rifle’ Al Khadra her oral verse is
Vivid testament to three decades’ conflict in the Sahara
Saharawi Poet Al Khadra
Poets of Protest – Poet of the Desert
Scottish Documentary Institute
|
The men that trained the women said:
‘It’s
not fair to walk in front of a Sahrawi woman.’
Source and notes
“Artscape: Poets of Protest” can be seen on Al Jazeera
English from August 31, 2012.
Ever since Tunisians chanted Abu al-Qasim al-Shabi’s ‘If the
People Wanted Life One Day’, poetry has been a key weapon of the Arab Spring,
used to taunt regimes’ refusing to see the writing on the wall.
As the revolution spread to Egypt, it turned out that the
writing on the wall was also poetry (graffiti) by young artists painting the
works of poets like al-Shabi or Egypt’s Ahmed Fouad Negm.
“Poets of Protest” focuses on the writers, their political
and artistic struggles and their work with beautifully filmed visual
interpretations of the poems.
In Egypt, a rare, intimate profile of 82-year-old folk hero
and Egyptian poetry superstar Ahmed Fouad Negm (‘the voice of the revolution’)’
and Syria’s renowned poet Hala Mohamad expresses the pain of watching from
exile as her country is violently torn apart.
“Poets of Protest” goes beyond the Arab Spring to hear the
works of Mazen Maarouf from Palestine, Manal al-Sheikh from Iraq, Yehia Jaber
from Lebanon, and the ‘the poet of the rifle,’ Al Khadra, from Western
Sahara.
“Poets of Protest” page last updated September 2, 2012, Al
Jazeera, http://m.aljazeera.com/se/20126257221678728
Western Sahara
Arabic Al-Ṣahra al-Gharbiyyah (formerly, 1958–76, Spanish Sahara); population (2007 est.):
489,000.
Territory occupying an extensive desert Atlantic-coastal
area (97,344 square miles [252,120 square km]) of northwest Africa, it is
composed of the geographic regions of Río de Oro (‘River of Gold’), occupying
the southern two-thirds of the region (between Cape Blanco and Cape Bojador);
and Saguia el-Hamra, occupying the northern third.
Western Sahara is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the west
and northwest, by Morocco on the north, by Algeria for a few miles in the
northeast, and by Mauritania on the east and south.
http://www.scottishdocinstitute.com/category/films/
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