Sadek Mohammed

Sadek Mohammed is Associate Professor of English at Al-Mustansiriyah University and serves as an editor of Gilgamesh, Iraq's cultural magazine in English.

Soheil Najm

Haider Al-Kabi

Dan Veach

Flowers of Flame
Unheard Voices of Iraq

 Edited by

Sadek Mohammed

Soheil Najm

Haider Al-Kabi

Dan Veach

Winner: 2009 IPPY Bronze Medal for Poetry

"...a startling, dynamic and unforgettable journey of active voices that embrace the belief that the strongest force amidst war is the power of poetry." - BLOOMSBURY REVIEW

Click this link to read an extract from Flowers of Flame including the Title page, Contents, introductory pages, and six pages of poems.

"The startling fresh poems gathered here, which range from the grim to the ecstatic, stand as a crucial reminder that the country of Iraq cannot be reduced to a place of terrorism, for it is populated by real people, some of them poets with real voices."
- Billy Collins, Poet Laureate of the United States, 2001-2003

Despite years of war and tsunamis of sound bites, this will be the first opportunity many readers will have to meet Iraqis as real human beings, speaking heart to heart. In these pages are the unheard voices of Iraq: men and women, Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds. These poems were collected, as the war raged all around them, by Iraqis living and working in Baghdad. This is their message to the world, one that transcends all the barriers dividing present-day Iraq.

Iraq's poets have suffered imprisonment, exile, and death for the truths they have dared to tell. Poetry is not a luxury in Iraq, but a vital part of the struggle for the nation's future. This is poetry that is feared by tyrants and would-be tyrants. You will find joy here as well as struggle. Arabic poetry has a long and rich tradition of ecstatic love, whimsical humor, and philosophic insight. Remarkably, charm and lightness of touch abound. Even the war invites you to a picnic—from which you will not return untouched. Many of these poems were written in response to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003. "Tomorrow the War Will Have a Picnic," for instance, was composed on the eve of the "shock and awe" campaign against Baghdad. We see here, through Iraqi eyes, the fall of Saddam's statue, his trial, the ongoing sectarian violence, and the foreign invaders on both sides of the struggle.

Reviews

"...startling, dynamic and unforgettable journey of active voices that embrace the belief that the strongest force amidst war is the power of poetry." - Bloomsbury Review

"...fulfills its purpose in a most beautiful fashion. In this volume, readers hear Arabic voices in translation showing the forgotten side of war-the country in which the war was fought....acultural shock."- Patricia Clark, award-winning poet-in-residence at Grand Valley State University.

"The translations from Arab, Kurdish, or Turkoman are fluent....brings to awareness how the war has affected average Iraqis." - Midwest Book Review

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