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An Interview with Ferhad Shakely
Ferhad Shakely visited Iranian Kurdistan in 1990. In a meeting with the editors and writers of the Kurdish magazine Sirwa, journalist Aziz Kaikhosrawi, who was earlier a teacher of Persian language and literature, asked to interview him. Shakely suggested that he submit questions in writing and he did so. Then came the turmoil of the Gulf war. Shakely 's family was among the more than a million Kurds who fled Iraqi Kurdistan. It was not until the Spring of 1992 when he was in residence in England under a research scholarship at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London that he was able to take the time to answer the questions. At that time the Iranian official in charge of monitoring Sirwa 's content rejected the interview and it was published in Kurdish in a small book in Stockholm in 1994. The text was subsequently translated into English by Muhammad Kamal, a lecturer at Melbourne University in Australia, who holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and is the author of two books in English on Hegelian philosophy.
1. How do you define poetry?
This is one of the most difficult questions asked of a poet. There are some poets who put together a few bright and colorful terms to try to answer the question. But although they say nothing new, they believe that they have defined and formulated a new literary theory. There are many such people in Kurdish literature. Just browse the interviews of the last three decades. Fortunately, I am not one of them. I have been writing for twenty years, but I cannot define poetry. It is not necessary for a poet to define poetry. There is also the problem of which definition is acceptable. A survey of critical studies of poetry from beginning with the ancient Greeks through the Renaissance, Romanticism and Modernism in Europe reveals hundreds of good definitions. Although these studies and the schools of literary criticism have been divergent throughout history, they have not succeeded in changing the direction of poetry or forcing a poet to write in accordance with styles and objectives demanded by critics. On the contrary, it is more appropriate that a creative writer...