March 15, 2010

2010Kazim al-Samawi, Iraqi poet (born 1925)^[†]

Kazim Jasir Faraj, better known as Kazim al-Samawi, was an Iraqi poet and journalist known for his humanist worldview. From the 1950s, he spent more than half of his life in exile as a political refuge and was known by title "The Elder of the Iraqi exiles" or "The Shaykh of Exiles". He moved between many countries, such as Lebanon, Hungary, Germany, China, Syria and Cyprus until he finally settled in Sweden. Al-Samawi published his first poetry collection in 1950 and was as a result was persecuted by the Nuri al-Said government. Later, he and his family faced persecution in Ba'athist Iraq, and he experienced the death of almost all his family members, often in quick succession. Through his poetry in various forms, genres and metres, he was very involved in general human affairs. His family name is derived from his hometown demonym, Samawah. He studied in Baghdad and graduated from the Rural Teachers’ House in 1940, continued his higher studies in Hungary and graduated from the Faculty of Arts in 1956. He worked for a while in journalism in Baghdad with a progressive tendency, founded The Humanity in 1956, a twice-weekly leftist newspaper. He left about seven poetry collections that have been translated into several languages. Al-Samawi died at the age of 85 in Stockholm and was buried in Sulaymaniyah.