Poetic Nonfiction in Iraqi Kurdistan

Book: Echo Gods and Silent Mountains

Author: Patrick Woodcock

Publisher: ECW Press

“From being mere labels for material objects, words gradually turn into magical charms. Out of a catalogue of material facts is developed–thanks to the efforts of forgotten primitive geniuses–all that we know today as ‘poetry’.”

– Owen Barfield

A guide leads the poet to a small rectangular hole. They climb down to see where the Kurds hid, four families to a cave, when Saddam Hussein was bombing them. It smells terrible, it’s dark and dank and teeming with bugs. Although the bombing has stopped and Saddam is gone, old men still go down there to recite poems to each other. (Read the rest here.)