New - Poems EXTRA - Poems In Arabic From Different Periods

Looking in old papers and files I came across a file titled "Poems for Publishing". These are poems in Arabic, some typed, some hand-written, which I had selected for publishing few years ago but never sent them out. They are selected from various unpublished complete collections. Although some were written twenty years ago, they are still waiting for my negligent soul to move and publish them.

Please find the first scanned and uploaded poems in the section titled "Poems-EXTRA" (above).
I have no time to write them in the computer, therefore, I am scanning and publishing them gradually as images.

Please visit frequently. I am always adding new poems.

Standing from r. to l.: Mahdi Mutashar (painter, from Al-Hilla, now in France), Yahya Ash-Sheik (painter and sculptor, from Al-Imara or Baghdad, now probably in Iraq or Syria), Ali Talib (painter, from Al-Basrah, I don´t know his current whereabout). I do not remember the names of the others. Sitting, from r. to l.: Anwar Al-Ghassani. I don´t remember the names of the other three.

I am sitting in the garden of the villa that was then the Academy of Fine Arts in Al-Iwadhiya district of Baghdad. The garden extended some hunderd meters and reached the bank of the Tigris river. The students in the photo were all of the first year of the painting section in 1962-1963. Missing from the photo are: the late Layla Al-Attar (1940-1993, painter, died on June 27, 1993, together with her husband and housekeeper during a US missile attack on Baghdad), Saida Al-Assmar (a Palestinian, I don´t know her current whereabout), Shaker Hamad (painter, from Al-Imara, I don´t know his current whereabout), and Sawsan (painter, I don´t know her current whereabout).

The photo dates to the period of September 1962 - January 1963. Those were the first months of the first year of my study of painting at the Academy. I was happy since I had finally, after waiting for seven years, achieved enrollment at the university. Although literature was my preference, I was happy with painting, my second preference.
This calm, indeed serenity in the photo, will soon change. on February 8, while we were in our short two weeks winter holiday, the Baath party overthrew the military regime of General Abdulkarim Qassim, who was executed together with his closest aides. A violent campaign of summary executions, arrests and confinement of thousands of people in concentration camps followed. It would last until November of that year when a new coup d´etat would remove the Baath party from power.

When we returned to the Academy after the winter holidays, students who were Baath party members started arresting leftist students. Then we were told that we would be leaving the villa and would have lectures and workshops at the old Institute of Fine Arts. There, one day in March, I was arrested by the National Guard (the Baath militia) unit at the Institute and sent to the Olympic Club which the Baathists had converted it to a detention center. Later, I will discover that two reactionary Turcoman students from my hometown Kirkuk at the Institute were the ones who denounced me as a communist. That was the start of my detention for eight months in different places. I was finally sent to Kirkuk where I stayed in detention until the Baath was removed from power. I was released on bail and went back to Baghdad. At the Academy, the Baathists were still there and the atmosphere was still hostile. I decided to give up my study and went to work in the press as a translator and editor. Later in 1964, I had to stand trial at the Fourth Military Court in Kirkuk. With the help of a high officer, a distant relative, I was finally acquitted and released.

Back to the photo: I clearly remember the names of my co-students who mattered to me and I have forgotten the names of the rest. There is something strange about me in the photo. I am the only one formally dressed, sitting there, busy doing something as if the photo and the people around me didn´t interest me. I am immersed in my "world". It is perhaps because of this character feature that others considered me a somehow inaccessible person. Decades later, one of my students when interviewed about me would say she thought I was a mysterious person. Honestly, there is nothing mysterious about me. Admittedly, I have always been choosy and demanding. I never or rarely wasted time on persons and issues that were of little value. Some people thought I was too strict and lacked spontaneity. I think that is a misperception.

The New Iraq - Death in August - Death in Date Palm Trees Orchards

A Fragment

Friday, August 22, 2003

Finally, I now know where to find my book "Al-Iraq", my epical poem about Iraq.

This book consists of one epical poem of 96 pages which I wrote in Arabic in 1991 during the first Gulf War. The poem was published in 1992 by Riad El-Rayyes Books (London, Limasol, Beirut). At that time, the publishers sent me $300 and 20 copies of the book. After its publication, there were some very positive reactions from critics with the exception of one who wrote a stupid thing, not about the poem but about me. He blamed me for being too optimistic about Iraq !!!

And that was that. Since then, I never again heard a word about the poem, neither from scholars, critics or readers, nor from the publishers. The poem faded into oblivion in the mostly phlegmatic and superfial poetry appreciation in the Arab World.

Last year, I found a reference to the book under my name at amazon.com. The book was described as being out of print.

This went on until yesterday, October 28, 2008, when, by pure coincidence, I came across a Lebanese book vendor website, neelwafurat.com, where I found the book listed for sale.

Sixteen years after its publication the poem is still available in its first edition/ printing. It seems Arabic poetry readers haven´t been queuing to buy the poem that carries, at least since 2003, the name of a modern Arab tragedy. This is the state of low appreciation for serious poetry in the Arab World that never seizes to praise itself as a world of poetry lovers and expresses solidarity with Iraq day in day out, but when it comes to translating this into a small action, like buying a poem about the Iraqi tragedy, well, no, that is then too much an effort. I am generalizing, yet I do believe the Arab World deserves such a harsh judgement. However, I do see also the exceptions, there are exceptions to this in the Arab World.

Incredible! I couldn´t believe it. The site offers the book in this funny way: market price: $3, our price. $2.55. Oh, god, imagine this miserably low price. In December, I am planning to buy some 20 copies. Before that I will write to Neel wa Furat to thank them for reviving my hope and giving visibility to my book.

Click to see the book at Neel Wa Furat

Four of my Spanish Poems
in an Argentinian Anthology

Four of my poems written in Spanish were included In "Yaaa Aliii", an anthology of contemporary Iraqi poetry, published by Clase Turista, Buenos Aires. Although the anthology was published in 2006, I was only able to buy it and get it delivered in September 2008. (Please find below more details about the poems and the book.)

Der Darss

Shafts of light in a cathedral of trees,
columns, planes and arches, dark surfaces,
beetles with crimson shields.

The trees are comprehensible in terms of others:
those electrified, wounded, somnolent, vivacious,
and those hospitable trees.

We arrive at men and women,
counterfeited in stone and sinking.
Soon the nearby sea will take them to his garden.

Anwar Al-Ghassani
(A section from the long poem "ID", 1998)
Der Darss: The Darss peninsula, Germany.

Jimi Hendrix

                         (James Marshall Hendrix 1942- 1970)

His music is suspicious knowledge,
smashed at our ears
to maintain us alive till next morning;
sunken vessels, separated, each in a region.

Dreams to pay for,
no celebrations,
ancestral pain, offered
as equilibrium

on roads where we inquire:
Did they already eat?

And they, only on casual encounters, ask:  
O, why the separation?

For no purpose or reason;         
our lives wouldn’t be spared
if we kept silent.

Roads don’t bring the child home;
they overlap and change
as they extend to where values
we cherish and die for
are equalized:

Only the eye,
is image trap and scream
that displays
a hazy white landscape.

Anwar Al-Ghassani
San José, September 30, 2000 / August 15, 2008

Goddess Samia Gamal
(Egyptian belly dancer, 1924 – 1994)

Sie schafft ein immer lebendiges Bild von sich selbst.

(Anspielung an einem Satz von italienischen Architekten Carlo Ratti über Städte die sich ständig dynamisch ändern.)

Our gatherings to watch
her matter and light
transform to body and movement,
were never trivial events.
The to and fro of her body,
within time continuum,
was the pendulum of daily life.

On all days, when we rubbed her skin,
we obtained her adolescent aroma.
Exhibitionist of her body,
her gaming alluded
to virtual regions, her potentials,
solely attainable in dreams,
or as a package of godly bliss,
maintaining alive
the collective joy of our days.

She knew, seas and cities need our gifts;
thus her shoulders rocked seas and cities,
offering them our brotherhood.

Anwar Al-Ghassani
Berlin, Sunday, May 25, 2008

NEW --- More Poems In Arabic Uploaded

I am now uploading more poems in Arabic from the 1993 unpublished collection "Anashidul Ruh Al-Iraqia Al-Haiema" (Cantos Of The Errant Iraqi Soul)

The background story:

Due to my negligence and publishing difficulties this collection, written in 1993, remained sleeping among my papers during fifteen years. I didn´t even try to publish individual poems from the collection (perhaps with the exception of one or two).
I have now decided to do justice to the poems and publish most of the collection here at my Website until I have enough money to publish it as book on demand as I did with my recent collection "Second Patria" (see below on this page), or until some philanthropist comes along and volunteers to finance the publication of the collection.
Due to temporary difficulty with editing Arabic texts, I am scanning the poems and uploading them as images. Please use the zoom device to enlarge the text if necessay.
Finally, without intending to be pretentious, I consider these poems as fairly good, something I do not easily and always state about my poems. Please read and decide for yourself.

Click here to go to the Poetry Section, there click on the name of the collection under "Poems in Arabic - II"

46 poems, 76 pages, written in English about German themes.
Published by Book Surge Publishing.

Cover design: Manuel Salam Al-Ghassani Rodríguez
Cover drawing: Remembering Varna - Figures at the Beach, 1988, by Anwar Al-Ghassani
(original: 21x27cm, watercolor pencils and China ink)

The collection is now available ($10.99) at:

Description: Poems written in English by Iraqi poet Anwar Al-Ghassani as an homage to Germany, his second homeland, where he lived, studied and worked during three periods between 1967 and 1983. Those were years of his emotional and intellectual maturing and growth, of creative and happy times. They were also his years of the motorcycle and of explorations. These poems are also about reminiscences and about his almost yearly visits to Germany. They are about wonderful people, friends and places. Al-Ghassani writes poetry in Arabic, English, German and Spanish.