Upcoming Event
Diary of Mesopotamia: An Evening with Nabeel Yasin
Friday 25th March 2022, 7-9pm @ The Music Room, Pushkin House, WC1A 2TA
Join one of Iraq’s most famous poets and political activists, Nabeel Yasin, at Bloomsbury’s private lounge The Music Room for an evening of poetry reading, set to the sounds of live music by the Oud: an instrument considered an important part of Arab culture, with the beautiful sound produced as the strings are strummed.
As written about in The Poet of Baghdad: A True Story of Love and Defiance by Jo Tatchell, the poet’s story is a gripping one of a family and its fateful encounter with history. Born in 1950 in the Karradat Merriam district of Baghdad and finding his poetic voice as a student, Saddam's rise to power ushers in a new era of repression, imprisonment and betrayal from which few families will escape intact. In this new climate of intimidation and random violence, Iraqis live in fear and silence; yet Nabeel’s mother tells him “It is your duty to write.”
His poetry, a blend of myth and history, attacks the regime determined to silence him. As Nabeel’s fame and influence as a poet grows, he is forced into hiding when the Party begins to dismantle the city’s infrastructure and impose power cuts and food rationing. Two of his brothers are already in prison and a third is used as a human minesweeper on the frontline of the Iran-Iraq war. After six months in hiding, Nabeel escapes with his wife and young son to Beirut, Paris, Prague, Budapest, and finally England.
Both in Hungary and later in the UK, he was a prominent figure in the Iraqi opposition movement in exile, appearing often in print and electronic media. The Saddam regime was toppled by the American invasion in early 2003, and Yasin returned to Iraq for the first time in 2007, after spending 27 years in exile. Prior to the parliamentary elections in March 2010, Yasin set up a secular political party called Justice & Freedom: Renew Iraq, running for position of Prime Minister.
Yasin published his first book of poetry in 1969. The Saddam regime prevented the publication of his second book for two years, eventually allowing it to appear in censored form in 1975. His poems written in exile - for example, his best known work The Brothers Yasin - was banned in Iraq and circulated in Baghdad's literary underground via photocopies.