RCAH poetry series brings Iraqi writers to MSU

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A passion for words forced Dunya Mikhail to flee from Iraq in the late ’90s — she received threats from Iraqi authorities about her writings.

Ironically, it was her position as a poet that allowed her to safely leave her home.

“Poetry saved my life,” said Mikhail, who also worked for The Baghdad Observer.

Having the title of “poet” as a profession on her passport allowed her to leave safely from Iraq and avoid excessive procedures, including the requirements of a leave of absence and a male chaperone.

At the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities, or RCAH, during the Fall Poetry Reading Series on Wednesday night, poetry’s power to save lives was reiterated.

Mikhail, who won the United Nations Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing in 2001, was joined by Soheil Najm, an Iraqi poet and editor of Gilgamesh, Iraq’s cultural magazine that is written in English.

The reading was held to celebrate the publication of “Flowers of Flame: The Unheard Voices of Iraq,” the first collection of Iraqi poetry since the United States started the war in Iraq. The anthology, contains works by both Mikhail and Najm.

Najm, who lives in Baghdad, co-edited and collected the poems for “Flowers of Flame”..Najm shared some of the work of his colleagues as well as original material at the reading. For him, poetry became a voice amidst a devastating situation.

“Poetry is not the most important in our life; the most important is how to live your life,” Najm said. “But later on, and after the shock of what happened, I didn’t find any type of writing but poetry to express myself. Through poetry, I think I reflect what is going on in my reality, in my life.”

Dan Veach, editor of the Atlanta Review and co-editor and translator of “Flowers of Flame,” believes poetry’s power lies in the humanism it provides.

“Poetry helps you connect to people as real human beings,” Veach said. “The trouble with the Iraq war is that we’ve had all of this news, news, news, but we’ve never met any of the people. We don’t feel connected with them as people. There’s no hostility about that relationship; we’re just trying to get to understand each other better.”

The mission of the RCAH Center for Poetry is to bridge the communication gap among countries, editors, poets, teachers and students, said Anita Skeen, director of the RCAH Center for Poetry and arts coordinator for the RCAH.

“It seems to me that there are so many of us right now who are in some way either primarily or tangentially involved in poetry, but we don’t have many avenues to get together or talk to each other, except on the page,” Skeen said. “And that’s fine but there are other dimensions besides the page, and for our students to be able to hear in their own voices these poets from Iraq, it’s just kind of hardly more than I can say … it’s a wonderful thing.”

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