Khalid Albudoor

Khalid Albudoor is an Arabic poet born in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on April 7, 1961. Albudoor, who was raised in Dubai, is considered to be one of the most important names in the modern poetry movement of the UAE. [http://albudoor.googlepages.com/home]

Education and early work

Studied mass communication at United Arab Emirates University and then attended Ohio University in the United States where he obtained an MA in script writing. He began publishing his poetry in 1980 and has been quite active in his community, helping to establish the Emirati Writers’ Union and participating in several poetry festivals in the UAE and abroad. [http://albudoor.googlepages.com/english]

Later work and achievements

Worked as a Radio and Television programme presenter and has also produced several documentary films and programmes. Won the Al Khal Prize for Poetry in Lebanon in 1991.

Has published three poetry collections and his fourth is due late 2008. [http://albudoor.googlepages.com/almajmo3at]

Poetry collections

Albudoor has published the following collections [http://albudoor.googlepages.com/almajmo3at] :

# Night (Layl), published in 1992.
# Jabr Wa Ghazal, published in 1999.
# Winter (Shtaa), published in 2002.

Recognition

Dr. Omnia Amin, a teacher of English literature in Zayed University in Dubai, talks about Albudoor's work [http://albudoor.googlepages.com/english] :

Khalid Albudoor is a poet of a different calibre as his poetry has an intrinsic flavor resonant with the myriad possibilities offered by life. His poetry is quick to penetrate to the reader as he does not force judgments and prejudices upon places and situations. Rather, he celebrates life in a wholesome and an all-embracing ritual of his own. Life for him is to be celebrated with all the five senses and is to be embraced with the soul of a connoisseur of life’s multi-flavored dimensions. Albudoor celebrates the pleasure and pain of existence, beauty and ugliness, the dark and light aspects of the self and others, without a sense of bitterness. Everything for him is good, to be sampled and enjoyed for its own sake. There is no feeling of sorrow or loss except in the thing’s ability to offer the poet a new door for exploring life in all its different forms. This makes his experience closer to that of the all-endorsing mystic or the wisdom of a Buddhist seeker. His language is simple but rich with layers of the sensual and the spiritual. Each and every reader will find a level that can satisfy his/her own experience. Albudoor’s poetry gives a communal feeling that everything shared becomes part of the richness of everyone, part of the collective experience of all times.

Selected poems

The following poems are taken from Albudoor's collection, entitled “Winter,” published in 2002 by the Emirates Writers’ Union in the UAE [http://albudoor.googlepages.com/english] . (Translated from Arabic by Omnia Amin)

Possibilities

I sleep Certain there is another life Behind every night But I do not know From which direction The wind will blow I carefully weave my dreams Like someone weaving possibilities Possibilities That largely resemble The morning’s fog.

Stones

When you went out After a hot bath With steam rising from you You turned your sight And gazed at the window As you stumbled in your steps To prepare the incense. I know that you are thinking of the stones I collected from the cold river In Tennessee Which you have to leave behind When you depart.

The Trees

I look behind To make sure If there is someone … I look behind And see the trees. I return to my loneliness To think of the garden. Why do we return To fill our days with yearning And drive our feelings towards their deceptions? In the evening’s dust We always Return To where we began Like two papers In the middle of a book Or like two words That were not written Why do we return to a time before utterance To throw ourselves together Without a language Or without words. I see you My balcony And I see that she Has reached my Green plant, Let me then tie a thread to the curtain So she would follow it. I want to cry a little For the heart is heavier than a mountain I want to wet this night a little To kiss you a little in your sleep Until you sleep And I want to cry Because I could not remember How .. when Where The last time It rained. My longing increases Whenever birds stand in my balcony And you, Whenever the years fall off Our window, You seem sweet Like a summer shore, While searching for ourselves We met When they were switching the lamps off And the flowers were thrown After the sleepless threw them away From the tables, Everyone seemed A stranger, as if we do not know them And the night ended its final chapter. We were laughing I saw your iris Get wet With ecstasy. When we left the place The branches of love Were entwined over the trees.

The Pendulum

I lie down As my eyes resist in darkness The last white drops of awakeness I see you drink I could almost hear the water Mix in your mouth And your heart beats bitterly Like a tired watch Without regularity. Let us contemplate together This empty night When we return At two in the morning And cannot make love The clothes The sheets The overturned books Your body, the glass of water The pillow, my head My soul In which the departure bell Rings tomorrow In the early morning. Let us contemplate together This night that is left for us The house That will be deserted by its people The edges of the silver moon Are sharp Resembling The edges of our days. You do not answer I see you search for words And your eyes water I know that you are Wading in memories In the heart of the night Where desire is awake, Although our minute is dark And the stars have closed their eyelids Look It is five in the morning The bell of departure rings Like the pendulum of a watch And we have to Get up.

The Birds

They will all arrive this time The shiver The shaking of the soul And the swirl of memories. They will arrive While the dawn’s fog crowns the trees And slowly pours Over the heart. I got out of my sleep But For years Wishes have no morningIn the hall of my house And the birds did not pass To spread their greetings Or to eat the seeds From the palm of my hand.

The Toasts of Names

When the night’s roaring pulled us with its waves and we listened to fear, in the place where we exchanged toasts of names for the first time Did you hear how the springs pour And how the nights that shine like silver Pull us towards the hissing of the dawn … I helped you climb the fence Then we stole the fruit of the Cyprus garden No one saw us We collected the fallen laughter As we shook the apple tree We listened to the roaring of the night there Love was Our small basket And we had not yet become lovers.