Sugar House Review(s)

Women’s Voices from Kurdistan: A Selection of Kurdish Poetry

Edited by Farangis Ghaderi, Clémence Scalbert Yücel & Yaser Hassan Ali

(National Press London, 2021) 

Reviewed by Steven Barfield & Alan Ali Saeed

This slim, elegantly presented bilingual volume of Kurdish poetry translated into English and created by the Exeter Kurdish Translation Initiative is likely to appeal to anyone interested in women’s lived experiences and how they has been woven into the memorable lines and resonant images of poetry. It is worth noting in advance that it also includes two male Kurdish poets, who wrote positively about Kurdish women’s experience and served as important proponents of feminist values: Hêmin (1921–1986) and Fayeq Bêkes (1905–1948). If Kurdish women’s lived experience is often distinguished by a sense of oppression, then it is also one that engenders female solidarity and fortitude. This is perhaps summed up in one of the final poems in the volume, “The Secret,” which moves deftly between the metaphorical and the literal. 

Gulîzer (1979–), a Turkish Kurd, uses a deliberately non-patriarchal pseudonym and has published several collections with Avesta in Istanbul. She remarks in her lyric “The Secret” (“Raz”): 

    I entrust each of my broken parts 

    To a woman close to me 

    I know 

    Women always have a chest 

    For the safekeeping of these parts cherished and broken. 

The book is innovative, covering a wide selection of diverse Kurdish poetry from the 19th to the 20th centuries that has been translated for the first time. Usually, the poems were written originally in one of the Kurdish dialects (the book covers work in Gorani, Sorani, and Kurmanji), as well as Arabic. There are nine poets represented in the volume. It makes no claim to be representative in the broader corpus of Kurdish poetry as its focus is only on the work of women or those male poets who advocated for women’s rights and value. It is pioneering in highlighting women’s poetry, rather than the more familiar work of Kurdish male poets. 

For those interested in assessing this marginalization, Ghaderi and Scalbert Yücel’s useful introduction offers notes to various PhD dissertations and critical essays on the subject of Kurdish women’s poetry for the English reader. The volume demonstrates not only the poets’ attention to issues such as war, conflict, and oppression (an unavoidable aspect of the Kurdish experience), but also a focus on gender discrimination, as well as themes drawn from everyday aspects of female experience, such as family, intimacy, fantasy, and romantic love, which are arguably less predominant amongst the concerns of Kurdish poetry written by men. 

Kurdish is a minority language. It has only relatively recently become recognized as an official state language in Iraq. Little has been translated into English and, in addition, literary translation is hindered because its native speakers fear they lack fluency in the target language of English. Ghaderi and Scalbert Yücel organized workshops around a co-translation model in which Kurdish native speakers of different dialects worked with a translation editor or a co-translator to polish the English versions of the poems produced. This is a productive model for the translation of literary texts from minor languages into major ones and where the number of native bilingual speakers is restricted. 

The collection is a broad selection of Kurdish female voices that presents poems of real quality and distinction. We suspect readers will find themselves wishing for more poems from the poets anthologized here. Many featured poems excel in their lyrical depiction of personal experience while also speaking to general aspects of human experience. For example, Mestûre Erdelan (1805–1848), who wrote in Gorani, is represented by a beautiful and moving elegy for her husband, Khosrow Khan. The elegy’s final lines, “How I wish the throngs of blossoms would be destroyed / and poppies would yellow with aching hearts,” remind us how grief often involves unhappiness and anger that the world goes on despite the loved one’s death. The poem’s setting in spring, a time of yearly renewal, seems especially cruel to her, because her late husband loved this time of year. Hêmin (1921–1986), a celebrated Iranian Kurdish poet, is represented by “Memory of Shirin,” which manages to start as a seeming love poem to a Kurdish woman but becomes a bold, anthemic argument for female empowerment and education: 

    Even if we have thousands of clear-watered rivers like Zê, Gader and 

    Lawên, life’s springs will be muddy if women are not free. 

    Slavery is outdated, dear Kurdish girl! 

    Rise, awaken—it is not the time to sleep! 

    Break the door, rip the veil, run to school. 

    The remedy for the Kurdish malady is education, education. 

Fayeq Bêkes (1905–1948) was from Iraqi Kurdistan, near Sulaymaniyah. In the poem “Nasrin,” the speaker addresses a woman he empathizes with because her subordinate position fills him with a burning sense of injustice because the Kurdish project of inclusive nation-building cannot simply ignore and leave women behind. The speaker warns Nasrin that she is “chained, your life is oppression-filled” and implores her to “throw away the veil, there’s no shame in that.” He views the Islamic veil as an emblem of her oppression by patriarchy. 

Jîla Huseynî (1964–1996) from Iran wrote in both Persian/Farsi and Kurdish and is 

represented by both a dream poem about a man she loves, or could love, “When I Dream About You” and “Question,” a poem about what it means to be a woman across the generations: 

    My mother’s worn scarf 

    Does not leave my head alone. 

    It says: ‘I am your grandmother’s.’ 

    It might have been her grandmother’s too. 

Diya Ciwan (1953–present), was born in Turkey and moved to Syria in 1975, but she now resides in Iraq. “The Needle” is a humorous poem, seizing on an object associated with women’s work (by implication the so-called trivial nature of such domestic work in men’s eyes), which Ciwan turns by an extended argument into a powerful symbol of affirmation. The needle for her is empowering and more valuable than one of the famed Damascene swords traditionally beloved by male warriors: 

    

    For as long as there is light in my eyes 

    I shall never leave her, 

    or swap her for the Sword of Damascus.

Tîroj (1959–present), a pseudonym of the Iraqi Kurdish poet Hana Mohamed, has written in both Arabic and Kurdish. She is represented here by two passionate love lyrics that depict the speaker’s state of mind and challenge the idea of the woman as being only a passive, decorous object of love for man. In “From the Glow of Imagination” the speaker remarks: 

    I broke my pen 

    I tore up my pages 

    And set them on fire 

Trîfa Doskî (1974–present), also from Iraq, writes in Bahdinani Kurdish and offers daring and often passionate lyrics, several of which are represented here. However, she also channels love poems into elegiac depictions of the grief and survivor guilt that inhabit Kurdish culture after the Anfal and the calamity of the wars against Saddam Hussein’s regime. In “Widow’s Hopes,” a woman laments her dead lover: 

    The homeland has become a mass grave, 

    and I cannot put down by my foot anywhere, I fear I’ll step 

    on your head; oh, you who once slept in my arms. 

    So I panic. 

Viyan M. Tahir (1983–present) from Duhok Iraq, is probably the most contemporary of the Kurdish poets represented here, as her first volume was only published recently in 2020. Her two poems are visceral explorations of the conditions of love from the woman’s point of view and the difficulties and passion of amorous relationships. The female speaker is caught in the tumult between the desire for amorous surrender and the preservation of her identity. In “Ego,” she remarks to her lover: 

    Every second of my life 

    Is clogged with your colour. 

    I try so hard to empty myself of you, 

    I want so much to rob you of myself, 

    So you get drunk on my cupful of love. 

The book is a fine sampler of Kurdish women’s voices, that in the end will leave you wishing there were more from each of these poets. As readers we can only hope this anthology will inspire a publisher to commission a significantly lengthier volume, allowing more of the work of these and other Kurdish poets to be read by English readers in translation. 

Steven Barfield was a British academic for most of his career, teaching

principally at the University of Westminster, London. More recently he has been

an educational consultant, and has taught, mentored, and advised throughout the

Middle East. Now largely retired from teaching, he remains a researcher and is a

visiting research fellow at London South Bank University.

Alan Ali Saeed is associate professor of English literature at Sulaimani

University, Iraq. He has a BA from Sulaimani University (2004), an MA (London

University, 2009), a PhD on Bergson and British modernist stream of consciousness

women's writing (Brunel University, 2016), and a PGCHE (Falmouth, 2021) in

university teaching. See his publications here: Sites.google.com/a/univsul.edu.iq/

alan-ali-saeed/publications.