Abdulla Goran

Abdulla Goran, (1904-1962) was a Kurdish poet. He undoubtedly brought about a revolution in Kurdish poetry, and is also called the father of modern Kurdish literature. At this time Kurdish poetry was loaded with hundreds of years of foreign heritage, especially Arabic. Goran cleared his poetry of this influence and gave it a form, rhythm, language and content which was based on Kurdish reality and Kurdish culture, nature and folkloric traditions. The Arabic meter ('urûz), much used in all Muslim Oriental poetry, was exchanged for patterns from old Kurdish folk songs, and the vocabulary was purified of Arabic and other languages.

Life

Born Abdulla Sulaeiman in Halabja in 1904, he studied in Kirkuk. When his father and elder brother died, he left school and worked as a teacher for several years in the Hawraman region. In the 1940s when the Allies established a Radio Station in Jaffa, Goran served as Kurdish staff member. Active in the Iraqi Communist Party he was arrested and tortured many times during the period of the monarchy. Until 1954, he was editor for the jounal Jîn (Life). In early 1959, he gained the position as editor in chief for the journal Shafaq (dawn, later changing name to Bayan). He was appointed a lecturer at the Department of Kurdish language and literature at the University of Baghdad in autumn 1960. As a member of the Iraqi Committee of peace and solidarity he often traveled to the former Soviet Union. He became ill with cancer and died in Kurdistan on November 18, 1962.

Works

The dominant themes in Goran's poetry are his ideal of freedom and his love for Kurdistan, for women and for nature. His way of depicting nature is unique within Kurdish literature. Here and through other aspects Goran reveals a familiarity with the leading European modernist poets.

Goran went through three different periods in his literary career. This is evident in both the content and the form of his poetry. First he went through a classic period following the footsteps of his predecessors.Then he went into a romantic period, where women and nature were the most dominant themes. He started to transform traditional patterns of poetry. Characteristically Goran often sees the woman in Natureand Nature in the woman as in the poem Beauty and the woman. In his mature years, Goran turned to free verse as a means of expressing his political commitment to his people's fight for freedom and the working class struggle. He exposed, in his subtle and innovative poetry, gender discrimination against women, specially honor killing. He strongly condemned honor killing in one of his poems, Berde-nûsêk (A Tomb-Stone).

Throughout the last years of his writing, however, one will observe how a progressively stronger political tendency in the end overshadows and weakens the aesthethic aspects of Goran's poetry.

Goran published his poems, articles and translations in majority of the Kurdish journals and newspapers between early 1930s and until his death. During his lifetime, two collections of his poetry were published, "Paradise & Memory" and "Firmêsk û Huner" (Tears & Art) in 1950.

Bibliography

# Tears and Art (Firmêsk û Huner), 1950. Translated in Swedish by B. Amin , F. Shakely and L. Bäckström as "Tårar och konst", Stockholm, 1986.
# Paradise and Memory (Beheştî Yadigar), 1950.
# Dîwanî Goran, Collection of Poems, Edited by M. M. Karim, Baghdad , 1980.

ee also

*Kurds
*Kurdish
*Iraqi Kurdistan
*Poetry

References

#Shakely, Farhad, [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0SBL/is_18/ai_n13801075 Goran] , International Journal of Kurdish Studies, January 2005.
#Hitchens, Keith. "Goran, Abdulla", In Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century. Vol. 2. 3rd ed., completely rev. and enl. Edited by Steven R. Serafin and others, pp. 276-277. Farmington Hills, MI: St. James Press, 1999.
#Shakely, Farhad, " [http://www.kerkuk-kurdistan.com/kulturek.asp?ser=4&cep=3&nnimre=310 Classic and Modern Kurdish Poetry] ", (Initiative for Human Rights in Kurdistan. Documentation of the International Conference on Human Rights in Kurdistan: 14-16 April 1989 . Bremen, Germany, 1989, pages 49-59.) reprinted in Kerkûk Kurdistan e, 17:31, 2002.
#Hassanpour, Amir, [http://www.utoronto.ca/wwdl/publications/english/hassanpour_11.pdf The Reproduction of Patriarchy in the Kurdish Language] , University of Toronto
#Mojab, Shahrzad, [http://www.amews.org/review/reviewarticles/mojabfinal.htm “Honor Killing”:Culture, Politics and Theory] , Association of Middle East Women's Studies Review, Vol. XVII, No.1/2, Spring/Summer 2002.
# [http://www.kurdishlibrary.org/Kurdish_Library/EnglishKL/Poetry_ENG/Poetry_Goran01_Eng.htm Beauty and The Woman, A poem by Goran ]
# [http://www.iranica.com/articles/v11f2/v11f2024.html Encyclopaedia Iranica]