Muzaffar al-Nawwab

Muzaffar al-Nawwab Poems

Muzaffar al-Nawwab Biography

[Muzaffar al-Nawwab (b. Baghdad, 1934) is one of Iraq’s most famous and influential poets. He studied literature in Baghdad and worked as a teacher. He joined the Iraqi Communist Party at a very early age and was imprisoned and tortured under the Ba’th. He left Iraq in 1970 and lived in exile until 2011 when he returned to Baghdad for a visit. Al-Nawwab is well known in Iraq and throughout the Arab world, especially among leftists and activist of various generations, for his powerful revolutionary poems and scathing invectives against Arab regimes and dictators. Banned in most Arab countries, his poems circulated widely from the 1970s onward on cassettes. They are widely available nowadays on the Internet. He is also considered one of the most innovative and influential Iraqi poets who composed in the spoken dialect. Although born to an aristocratic family in Baghdad, Al-Nawwab immersed himself in the dialect of southern Iraq in the 1960s and composed some of the most memorable poems in Iraqi collective memory, many of which were put to music and sung by famous contemporary singers. Except for a few editions of his early poems in the Iraqi spoken, Al-Nawwab, who shunned mainstream cultural circles and lived in various exiles for the last four decades, never published, or authorized, a collection of his own works. A critical edition, or any reliable printed diwan (there are many versions and unauthorized collections, in circulation) has yet to appear. “In the Old Tavern” is one of his most famous poems, composed (probably) in late 1970s. Al-Nawwab prefaced one of his famous recitals by saying that the obscenity of the political status quo exceeded the obscenity in his poems. Al-Nawwab’s health has deteriorated in recent years and he has not written any new poems. He lives in Beirut.”)

The Best Poem Of Muzaffar al-Nawwab

(iv-Letter-Word)

I am not shy when I speak out frankly of your reality
That a yard of hogs is much cleaner than all of you
May the bench of washing the dead move,
But you are immovable
Now I expose/undress you
In all the capitals of this Arab World
You have killed my gaiety
In every alley I see al-Azlam (the idols) Amami (before me)
Till I became avoiding even the phone
Even the walls and even the children
Vomiting for this crude method

Let us sit before the feet of the Arabian Desert
To let her pass a judgment on us
I admit before the Desert
That I am a banal, scoundrel and sad
As your defeat
O defeated honorable men
O defeated rulers
O defeated people
How dirty, how dirty, how dirty we are.
How dirty we are,
I don't exclude any one.

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