O, man, and you talk of excitement. When I was notified that the
poem will be included in Jokers.de poetry database, I felt the same
excitement I felt back in Kirkuk when I was fifteen and used to
send my texts to newspapers and magazines in Baghdad. On each day,
papers and magazines arrived by train in Kirkuk early in the evening.
I would go to Al-Awkaf Street where Abu Jassim, the only newspaper
vendor in Kirkuk at that time, displayed his papers on the pavement
near the Military Hospital. I would pick a paper and browse in it.
There it is, published on the fresh paper, a short story, some text,
or a translation.
That
wonderful feeling of success, of being recognized was overwhelming.
In the years that followed, I published many short stories, articles
and poems, but I never ever experienced the intensity of that feeling
of seeing my first attempts at writing published.
On March 14, 2006, I had that same feeling again when my first poem,
written directly in German (not revised by anybody), was published
as you can see. This is the first time that I realize that I can write
poems of some quality in German. This means a lot for me. I will certainly
start to write a whole collection in German sometime soon.
But, O, where are you JK to see how much I respected, appreciated
and loved you? Let all your days be blessings of light and silence
wherever you may be.
Bless your soul, Abu Jassim, for you always let me browse your papers,
even when I found nothing published for me and didn´t buy a
paper.
Please click on the link above. Thanks for your reading.
Anwar Al-Ghassani