Badr Shakir al-Sayyab

Badr Shakir al- Sayyab (Arabic: بدر شاكر السياب; * 1926 in Jaykur near Basra, Iraq, † December 24, 1964 in Kuwait) is an Iraqi poet and is considered the pioneer of modern Arabic poetry. Particularly well known is his poem "Rain anthem".

Life and work

Badr Shakir al- Sayyab was born in 1926 in Jaykur near Basra in Iraq. The exact date of birth is unknown. In 1948 he graduated from the teacher training college of Baghdad. Since he joined the then illegal Communist Party, but he was soon dismissed from the civil service. In the following years he spent with odd jobs. When he increasingly interested in 1958 for nationalistic tendencies, he was also a nationalist persecution and reprisals. Starting in 1958, broke with him from the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which he should not recover. He died at only 38 years in great poverty in Kuwait. Particular influence on his work had T.S. Eliot and Edith Sitwell. He had great influence on the work of the Arab poet Mahmoud Darwish. In his poems he frequently used myths as fertility gods Tammuz and Ishtar. He also engages in the poem back "Christ after the crucifixion " on Christian themes.

Swell

• Encyclopaedia of Arabic Literature: KZ By Julie Scott Meisami, Paul Starkey, Published by Taylor & Francis, 1998 ISBN 0-415-18572-6 p 696
• Badr Shakir al- Sayyab - Studies on the poetic concept in the divans azhar wa - al - matar asatir and unshudat by Leslie Tramontini, Wiesbaden, 1991, ISBN 3447031786