Huma Bird: Huma Bird Poets, Voices from the Middle East

By Tessa Dummett

Huma Bird is a phoenix that encompasses Iranian, Turkish and Urdu poetry traditions, thus reflecting the group. Find inside the passion of personal references of imprisonment, torture, the fight for human rights and identity; hear the rhythmic rap of youth pulsating for those here, those in Middle Eastern war torn regions; chuckle at the stories of Mualla Nasruddin, salivate at the chewing of 'tokhmeh' and 'ajil', breathe in the fragrance of olive and cypress trees, contradict your senses with a rose perfume and opium scents, even black roses; loll into the waves as they resonate the poems that lie behind them, enjoy the flight of the doves, the call of the nightingales, the poems of Huma Bird and Huma Bird Junior.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9781447624462

Book preview

Designed and Produced by:

Creative Communities

With support from:

9781447624462_0002_002

Holloway Neighbourhood Group

Front cover illustration by Esfandiar Ahmadi

Huma Bird logo by Abbas Zahedi

eISBN: 978-1-44762-446-2

Huma Bird

Voices from the Middle East

9781447624462_0003_002

Compiled & Edited by Tessa Dummett

Foreward

I have included a synopsis of each poet’s poetry voice in the way that the impressions of their poetry has left me with their images and of who they are as poets in some way, in particular their handling of middle eastern poetry themes for this project.

It has been difficult not to include images that I know of the three poets that I have known for much longer from Pegasus poetry group, Esfandiar, Hasan and Shahrokh. Whilst they have included some of their poems in this collection that are also in Pegasus ‘s recent first anthology, there are references such as Esfandiar’s angels, Hasan’s olive and cypress trees, and Shahrokh’s still chairs that you will find more of, or only, in Pegasus poems they have written.

I feel however that each poet that has contributed to this collection has, nevertheless a unique voice and their poetry is packed with very personal often repetitive images, that are reflective of their work, their personality, their culture, and nationality, and individual dual nationality whether that be literally or also being influenced by, and brought up in another country, or spending many years in this country, as well as their country of birth or parental descent. I have also included a synopsis of Nasser who whilst not a poet, by his own definition was actually motivated to write a few poems as a result of being involved in this project and the other Huma bird poets, and has included one of them in this collection.

Nasser has helped me enormously with this project in a very informative way and whose knowledge of both modern but especially ancient Persian poetry, history, politics and culture has helped me tremendously in my understanding of many of the poems references and has also taken part in putting this project together in the live book publishing class and therefore worked closely alongside all of Huma Bird poets.

I welcome this opportunity of also including a few of my poems that have some middle eastern theme, and am very grateful to Nasser and those within Huma bird that encouraged me strongly to do so.

Acknowledgements

Firstly I would like to thank Ben Moat from ‘Creative Communities’ for making this book possible and for all his patience and time given to this project, and also for enabling us to be part of the decision making in the structure and layout of the book in his very innovative and interesting idea of a book publishing class which has been a weekly event for the past few months of this project at Holloway Neighbourhood Group.

I would like to say a huge thank you too to Joan Hewitt who has kindly organised in collaboration with the churchwarden, Mr. Courtney Bailey, from Emmanuel Church at 145 Hornsey road in Islington, and a suitable time each week for the class to be able to have a room within the church premises where we have held the weekly classes for Huma Bird for the past eight months. Joan has often made a special journey to open the church for us and also to be able to use the kitchen facilities.

Joan has recognised the need for a space to hold the class and was sympathetic to the fact that the venue had to be free and local as she is also a member of Pegasus poetry group based at Hilldrop Community Centre and has been very instrumental in helping there too. Joan is very conscious that we are hoping to get funded from another local Community centre or project that is interested in enabling us to continue with this class and pursue other ventures such as giving back to the community in the way of poetry performances, as she knows only too well from being a poet within Pegasus poetry group, having done exactly that in local venues around Islington.

I am very grateful therefore to Mr. Courtney Bailey at Emmanuel church for also giving us this room and for also being kind enough to let us use the photocopier.

I am also extremely grateful to all the poets in Huma bird for their time and commitment in seeing this project through and also in attending the Wednesday book publishing class on a regular basis. I am very grateful to Shahrokh who has made great efforts to recruit new people from the onset and has stayed in touch with people who hope to be part of future projects but who couldn’t