Read poems from the 7 countries affected by Trump’s immigration ban

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A young girl dances with an American flag while women pray behind her during a protest against the temporary travel ban

A young girl dances with an American flag while women pray behind her during a protest against the temporary travel ban, at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. Credit: REUTERS/Laura Buckman

On Monday, Tehran-born poet Kaveh Akbar began tweeting out poetry written by poets from the seven countries — Iran, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, and Syria — impacted by President Donald Trump’s executive order that temporarily bans immigrants from those countries.

The poetry Akbar shared includes work from Khaled Mattawa, a Libyan poet born in Benghazi who emigrated to the U.S. as a teenager, Ladan Osman, who was born in Somalia and raised in Columbus, Ohio, and Safia Elhillo, a poet born in the U.S. to Sudanese parents, but who didn’t move to the U.S. until the year 2000.

Akbar said he was inspired to tweet Monday morning while reading the poetry of Persian poet Majid Naficy, and wondering what his life would be like without having read Naficy’s work. Naficy, who was born and raised in Iran, fled to the U.S. after Ayatollah Khomeini established theocratic rule in Iran in 1979, an experience that appears in Naficy’s poetry. His poem, “Allowance,” begins with the lines: “When creeping out of his tight skin / He suffers pain / And the world becomes small for him.”

“I was struck by how I was the very, very lucky beneficiary of this sort of gorgeousness and beauty,” Akbar said. “And how my person would be diminished from a lack of access to these sort of voices.”

Kaveh Akbar

Kaveh Akbar. Credit: B. A. Van Sise

Akbar often shares poets from a range of backgrounds on his Twitter account and at Divedapper, a contemporary poetry site he founded and edits. He said he has always felt compelled to share the poetry he loves with others.

This seemed particularly important to him on Monday, after a weekend of protests over the ban. He hoped that in sharing the poetry it would channel the rage people felt “toward a kind of love, and gratefulness” for that writing, he said.

The ban also has personal resonance for Akbar, who was born in Tehran and moved to the U.S. when he was two and a half years old. Though English is his primary spoken language, he said “there is a part of Iran that is hardwired into me.”

Akbar, who now teaches poetry in Florida, and whose debut full-length collection is coming out this Fall, sometimes writes about the difficulty of straddling different worlds and languages, and holding on to the culture of his origin country.

He believes that at its core, poetry is about sharing an experience with readers they might not have otherwise had.

“When you read a poem by a poet who is living in Syria, you are granted access to an experience that is absolutely nothing like your experience living in Duluth or Montpelier,” he said, and with that access often comes empathy. “So I think that engaging in that work is one of the most empathetic things we can do right now.”

Read the poetry Akbar shared below:

Poetry from the 7 countries impacted by Trump’s executive order on immigration

Shared by Tehran-born poet Kaveh Akbar.

Mohsen Emadi, Iran:

Mohsen Emadi-Iran translated by Lyn Coffin

Khaled Mattawa, Libya:
Khaled Mattawa-LibyaAbdullah Al-Baradouni, Yemen:

From Exile To Exile – Poem by Abdullah Al-Baradouni

My country is handed over from one tyrant to the next,
a worse tyrant; from one prison to another,
from one exile to another.
It is colonised by the observed
invader and the hidden one;
handed over by one beast to two
like an emaciated camel.
In the caverns of its death
my country neither dies
nor recovers. It digs
in the muted graves looking
for its pure origins
for its springtime promise
that slept behind its eyes
for the dream that will come
for the phantom that hid.
It moves from one overwhelming
night to a darker night.
My country grieves
in its own boundaries
and in other people’s land
and even on its own soil
suffers the alienation
of exile.

Safia Elhillo, Sudan:
Safia Elhillo-Sudan
Ladan Osman, Somalia:
Ladan Osman-SomaliaAmal Al-Jubouri, Iraq:
Amal Al-Jubouri-Iraq
Adonis, Syria:
Adonis-Syria

Source: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/poetry/read-poems-7-countries-affected-trumps-immigration-ban/