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Safaa Sheikh Hamad was born in Sherqat city, at the middle of Iraq, in 1977. He holds a B.A. and Post-Graduate diploma in Translation from the University of Mosul, Iraq, and an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Pune, India. He was the Director of Information and Public Relations Department at the University of Kirkuk from 2003 till 2004. He taught translation at the same university from 2004 till 2008. He is a member of the Iraqi Writers Union, the Iraqi Translators Association, and a translator for Universe of Poetry.
He is a translator and columnist. His weekly column, An Eye on the Arab World, at the Al-Watan (Nation) Moroccan newspaper, attracted the attention of many Arab journalists and political analysts. His poems and literary translations were published in many websites and journals around the world, such as Kritya, Poets Against the War, The Constructive Anarchy, and Ila Magazine. Presently, he is writing a weekly column, "Middle East" for the Iraqi newspaper Al-Aalem (The World). His poetry collection in Arabic, With a Stone of Fear, is to be published soon in Tikrit city by the Palace of Arts and Culture. In 2013, he translated the Anthology of Iraqi Contemporary Poetry 1981-2010 into English, as part of the activities of (Baghdad: The Capital of Arab Culture). He writes poetry in English and Arabic.
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English
version
Yell
The death of thy palm trees
Hath made us wonder:
“A home sung at the shadows of spears,
Trails of blood,
And the agonies of orphaned weeping widows
A home, for thousands of years
Never needed wooden swords
To fright the flame!”
To climb the Everest of the question marks
We had to quench the thirst of our own jeopardy
And yell indoor:
The land
The two rivers
Baghdad
The glory that once was
The after taste that once lingered!
And left us now,
Lost in time’s absurd matrices
Writing words on crazy walls
Weaving doubts around the dreams
Spinning like dervishes around the names
And left us now,
No ideas for the minds
No helmets for the heads
And the sky is raining
Many shells
Many shells
Baghdad
February, 2011
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English
version
Casus Belli
A dim light of hope
Sneaking from behind
The walls of the soul
A polite scorpion
Assumed my skin
A promised land for its sting
Basra
October, 2011
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