Farewell Mahmoud Darwish

Abu Dhabi TV 080811
[LinkTV/Mosaic]

080809 - Mahmoud Darwish, whose poetry his fellow Palestinians embraced as the voice of their suffering, died after heart surgery in Texas. The death of a man whose life and words were tightly bound up in a struggle for a Palestinian national rebirth that seems little closer than when his first work was published in 1960 was certain to trigger an outpouring of emotion.
Widely seen as the Palestinian "national poet", Darwish's writing was much translated. He won new generations of admirers with work that evoked not just the pain of Palestinians displaced, as he was as a child, by the foundation of Israel 60 years ago, but also subtle paradoxes and broader human themes.
Darwish is considered one of the greatest Palestinian poets ever, making his name through his poignant reflections on the Middle East conflict. In a career spanning nearly five decades, Darwish published more than two dozen books of poetry and prose rooted in his experience of Palestinian exile and the bitter Middle East conflict.
A sequence of poetry and prose written about his experience living in Beirut during the Israeli invasion and bombardment of Lebanon in 1982 was translated into English in 1995 under the title "Memory for Forgetfulness".
Widely considered one of the Arab world's greatest poets, Darwish had been harshly critical of Israel over the years and was detained several times in the 1960s before going into self-imposed exile in 1970. Over the next 25 years Darwish wandered from place to place, spending time in several Arab capitals and briefly residing in Moscow and Paris.
In 1988, Darwish wrote the official Palestinian declaration of independence and served on the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) until 1993, when he resigned in protest at the Oslo autonomy accords. He has been living in the West Bank town of Ramallah since 1995.
- http://tinyurl.com/65jqrj

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• Palestine
• poetry
• Darwish
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