Buland Al-Haydari was born in Northern Iraq on September 26, 1926 into a Kurdish family. Buland (Kurdish for mountain), moved to Baghdad as a boy and began to write Kurdish and Arabic poetry in his teens and early twenties. He was a great poet in Arabic literature.By the 1940’s, Al-Haydari was emerging as a self-educated poet dedicated towards expressing his political activism and left-wing politics through his poetry. His works sought to focus on political themes within Iraq that were concerned with oppressive rulers and abuse of power. He was part of the leftist intellectual community that promoted secular unity to overcome past colonized oppression, western hegemony and domestic dictatorship. Unlike the Iraqi Nationalist who sought to unify the country through Islam, Al-Haydari became part of the Marxist inspired rebellion against Islamism and Western colonization. He envisioned a secular democracy where all Iraqis, despite religion, could live together and appreciate the diversity of their country.
Buland Al-Haydari
In the 1950’s, he was involved in the Free Verse Movement that brought about important innovations in modern Arabic Poetry. Other creative developments occurred during this time in the areas of literature, short stories, the plastic arts and sculpture. These artistic movements reflected the marginalized communities’ desire to universalize their country’s struggle through internationalism and breaking away from rigid Arabic traditions. His poetry reflects this ideology but also moves beyond his Marxist contemporaries to include a very basic humanism in his poetry. Buland read and interacted with many international poets at the time, Turkish Nazim Hikmat, Chilean Pablo Neruda, the French Louis Aragon and the Spanish Fredrico Garcia Lorca. His poetic vision mirrored these fellow internationalists whom advocated liberation through universalism.
In 1958, after the fall of the British supported monarchy, Al-Haydari continued his political activism and was jailed in 1963. His actual crime is unknown but he was sentenced to death and only saved due to his reputation as one of the nation’s most famous poets. Exiled to Lebanon until 1976, Buland worked as a journalist, bookstore manager, and teacher. During this time he still wrote poetry on the Arab life and the struggles of Iraqi’s under dictatorship. He returned to Baghdad only to leave when Saddam Hussein came to power in the early 1980’s. Settling in London, Buland co-founded the Union of Iraqi Democrats and published twelve collections of poems and three editions of his collected works.
Al-Haydari died in 1996 at the age of 67. His dream for a unified Iraq has not been realized but his innovations to poetry, through experimentation with new metrical and rhythmical possibilities, along with his political themes aimed at freeing the world from injustice, no doubt inspire the next generation of political activists and artists working towards a peaceful Iraq.
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