Academic literature on the topic 'North African poetry'

We whose names are underwritten, do assure the World, that the poems in the following Page, were (as we verily believe,) written by phillis, a young Negro Girl, who was but a few Years since, brought an uncultivated Barbarian from Africa. […] She has been examined by some of the best Judges, and is thought qualified to write them.Attestation in Phillis Wheatley'sPoems on Various Subjects, Religious and MoralThe poems written by this young negro bear no endemial marks of solar fire or spirit. They are merely imitative; and, indeed, most of those people have a turn for imitation, though they have little or none for invention.Anonymous reviewer of Wheatley's poems in 1764 (Shields 267)It was not natural. And she was the first. […] Phillis Miracle Wheatley: The first Black human being to be published in America. […] But the miracle of Black poetry in America, the difficult miracle of Black poetry in America, is that we have been rejected […] frequently dismissed […] because, like Phillis Wheatley, we have persisted for freedom. […] And it was not natural. And she was the first. […] This is the difficult miracle of Black poetry in America; that we persist, published or not, and loved or unloved: we persist.June Jordan (252, 254, 261)More than two hundred years have gone by since the spring of 1773, when Phillis Wheatley, subject of the epigraphs of this essay, an African slave girl and the first person of her racial origin to publish a book in North America, collected her best poems and submitted them to public scrutiny. In search of authentication, she appeared with them before eighteen white men of high social and political esteem, “the best Judges” for such a case in colonial Boston. Wheatley's owners and supporters arranged this special audience to promote her as a writer. According to popular wisdom of the time, Africans were intellectually incapable of producing literature. None of the Anglo-Americans beyond her immediate circle could imagine her reading and writing well enough to create poetry.

George Moses Horton (1797?-1883?) is one of three African Americans known to have published poetry while enslaved in colonial north America or the United States. The recently discovered holograph manuscript of “Individual Influence” is the only available evidence that Horton also wrote short essays. Written in 1855 or 1856 and published here for the first time, “Individual Influence” provides a new perspective on Horton's writing process, his strategic affiliations in Chapel Hill, and his changing ideas about the relative efficacy of political and divine influence. More generally, the essay expands the available archive of writing by enslaved African Americans.

This article examines the mobility of a precolonial musical style known as Haul music in two African countries, Western Sahara and Mauritania. Haul music is based on a modal system in which music and poetry are intrinsically related. This article traces the historical and musicological aspects of the Haul modal system in Western Sahara and Mauritania by offering an insight into how the postcolonial period has determined two narratives of Haul: a historical nationalism by way of revitalising the precolonial past in Mauritania; and political nationalism when reconsidering the ongoing process of decolonisation in Western Sahara and the exile of its people to the refugee camps of the Hamada desert since 1975. Further, this article shows how the mobility of the Haul modal system provides a reconsideration of a precolonial past in existing music cultures in North Africa.

[First paragraph]The theme of human aerial flight permeates the mythology of Black America. Examples of the metaphor are found in major musical genres, myths and poetry in Black cultures that span the Caribbean and southern North America, embracing generations to testify to the depth of the cosmological and conscious projection of systems of flight escape and homeland return. While the theme of human flight does not occur in any significant proportion in West African mythology related themes of transformation and pursuit do appear. However, in African thought, witches and spirits possess the power of flight; a flight that can be blocked by the use of salt. The belief in spirit flight, ubiquitous in the Black diaspor of the New World, parallels that in African thought, but in the New World it is enlarged to include humans as possessors of the capability of flight.

The study aims to present a comprehensive analysis of the North African Judeo-Arabic dialects in their internal diversity and in their communal use in daily interaction as well as in specialized genres of oral and written discourse. Internal diversity pertains to the various daily and elaborated genres of discourse and types of texts that developed in Jewish communities from the sixteenth century, generating different lects, polylects, and archilects in poetry, in journalism, and in daily interaction; combinations of lects constitute the repertories of three distinct communal sociolects: rabbinic, males,’ and females’ sociolects. Internal diversity also includes the changing linguistic Arabic matrix and the external components it integrated and which hybridized the dialects: Hebrew-Aramaic, Berber, Turkish, and Romance (Castilian, Portuguese, Italian, French). Three oral texts illustrating various Judeo-Arabic lects are presented and discussed.

This is the first work of criticism to read Abdelwahab Meddeb as a poet. Selfconsciously indeterminate from philosophical and poetic perspectives, Meddeb's poetry is indebted to European, especially French, high poetic modernism; to the French literary turn to the United States; and to the author's desire to be read in the lineage of the major Sufi poets of classical Arabic literature. Turning his back on the hegemony of postcolonial literary prose with the 1987 chapbook Tombeau d'Ibn Arabi, Meddeb generates a new francophone lyric infused with the Sufi traditions of al-Andalus, North Africa, and the Near and Middle Easts. His new lyric rewrites itself as a Sufi consciousness in search of what lies beyond its knowledge of its current state, and his tonguing of the new francophone lyric leads us to a long overdue analytical paradigm.

This paper discusses the poetry of Audre Lorde and Natasha Trethewey, and the ways in which they bring to attention the often-silenced histories of African American females. Through close readings of Lorde’s poems “Call” and “Coal,” and Trethewey’s “Three Photographs,” these histories are brought to the present with the framework of the words “call” and “re-call.” The paper explores the ways in which Lorde creates a new mythology for understanding her identity as “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” in her innovative, intersectional feminist poetry. This is used as the framework for understanding modern poets like Trethewey, whose identity as a biracial black woman from the American South colors her lyric, more formal work. Lorde uses the vocal, oral tradition of calling as Trethewey relies on visual, gaze-focused recall. Recall is memory and re-call means bringing the hidden past into the future. The paper concludes by saying that all black female writers may participate in their own ways of calling out the truth and remembering what should be forgotten.

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2012.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In this thesis, I undertake an extensive overview of a range of language activities that foreground the materiality of language, and that require an active reader oriented towards the text as a producer, rather than a consumer, of meaning. To this end, performance, as a function of both orality and print texts, forms an important focus for my argument. I am particularly interested in the effect that the disruption of language has on the position of the subject in language, especially in terms of the dialogic exchange between local and global subject positions. Poetry is a language activity that requires a particular attention to form and meaning, and that is licensed to activate and exploit the materiality of language. For this reason, I have focused on the work of a selection of North American poets, the Language poets. These poets are primarily concerned with the performative possibilities of language as it appears in print media. I juxtapose these language activities with those of a selection of contemporary South African poets whose work is marked by the influence of oral forms, and reveals telling interplays between media. All these poets are preoccupied with the ways in which the sign might be disrupted. In my discussion of the work of the Language poets, I consider how examples of their print poetics present the reader with language fragments, arranged according to non-syntactic principles. Confronted by the lack of an individuated lyric subject around whom these fragments might cohere, the reader is obliged to make his/her own connections between words, sounds and phrases. Similarly, in the work of the performance poets, I identify several aspects in the poetry that trouble a transparent transmission of expression, and instead require the poetry to be read as an interrogation of the constitution of the subject. Here, the ―I‖ fleetingly occupies multiple, shifting subject positions, and the poetic interplay between media and language tends towards a continuous destabilising of the poetic self. Poets and performers are, to some extent, licensed to experiment with language in ways that render it opaque. Because the language activities of poets and performers are generally accommodated within the order of symbolic or metaphoric language, their experimentation with non-communicative excesses can be understood as part of their framework. However, in situations where ―communicative‖ language is expected, the order of literal or forensic language cannot accommodate seemingly non-communicative excesses that appear to render the text opaque. Ultimately, I am concerned with exploring the manner in which attention to the materiality of language might open up alternative understandings of language, subjectivity and representation in South African public discourse. My conclusion therefore considers the consequences when the issues opened up by the poetry – questions of self and subject, authority and representation – are translated into forensic frameworks and testimonial discourse.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: My proefskrif bied ‘n breedvoerige oorsig van ‘n reeks taal-aktiwiteite wat die materialiteit van taal sigbaar maak. Hierdie taal-aktiwiteite skep tekste wat die leser/kyker noop om as vervaardiger, eerder as verbruiker, van betekenis in ‘n aktiewe verhouding met die teks te tree. Die performatiewe funksie van beide gesproke sowel as gedrukte taal vorm dus die hooffokus van my argument. Ek stel veral belang in die effek wat onderbrekings en versteurings in taal op die subjek van taal uitoefen, en hoe hierdie prosesse die die dialogiese verhouding tussen lokale en globale subjek-posisies beïnvloed. Poëtiese taal-aktiwiteite word gekenmerk deur ‘n fokus op vorm en die verhouding tussen vorm en inhoud. Terwyl die meeste taalpraktyke taaldeursigtigheid vereis ter wille van direkte kommunikasie, het poëtiese taal tot ‘n mate die vryheid om die materaliteit van taal te gebruik en te ontgin. Om hierdie rede fokus ek selektief op die werk van ‘n groep Noord-Amerikaanse digters, die sogenaamde ―Language poets‖. Hierdie digters is hoofsaaklik met die performatiewe moontlikhede van gedrukte taal bemoeid. Voorts word hierdie taal-aktiwiteite met ‘n seleksie kontemporêre Suid-Afrikaanse digters se werk vergelyk, wat gekenmerk word deur die invloed van gesproke taalvorms wat met ‘n verskeidenhed media in wisselwerking gestel word. Al hierdie digters is geïnteresseerd in die maniere waarop die inherente onstabiliteit van linguistiese aanduiers ontgin kan word. In my bespreking van die werk van die Language poets ondersoek ek voorbeelde van hul gedrukte digkuns wat die leser voor taalfragmente te staan bring wat nie volgens die gewone reëls van sintaks georganiseer is nie. Die gebrek aan ‘n geïndividualiseerde liriese subjek, waarom hierdie fragmente ‘n samehangendheid sou kon kry, noop die leser om haar eie verbindings tussen woorde, klanke en frases te maak. Op ‘n soortgelyke wyse identifiseer ek verskeie aspekte wat die deursigtige versending van taaluitinge in die werk van sekere Suid-Afrikanse performance poets belemmer. Hierdie gedigte kan eerder gelees word as ‘n interrogasie van die proses waardeur die samestelling van die subjek in taal geskied. In hierdie gedigte bewoon die ―ek‖ vlietend ‘n verskeidenheid verskuiwende subjek-posisies. Die wisselwerking van verskillende media dra ook by tot die vermenigvuldiging van subjek-posisies, en loop uit op ‘n performatiewe uitbeelding van die destabilisering van die digterlike ―self.‖ Digters en performers is tot ‘n mate vry om met die vertroebelingsmoontlikhede van taal te eksperimenteer. Omdat die taal-aktiwiteite van digters en performers gewoonlik binne die orde van simboliese of metaforiese taal val, kan hul eksperimentering met die nie-kommunikatiewe oormaat van taal binne hierdie raamwerk verstaan word. Hierdie oormaat kan egter nie binne die orde van letterlike of forensiese taal geakkommodeer word nie. Ten slotte voer ek aan dat ‘n fokus op die materialiteit van taal alternatiewe verstaansraamwerke moontlik maak, waardeur ons begrip van die verhouding tussen taal, subjektiwiteit en representasie in die Suid-Afrikaanse publieke diskoers verbreed kan word. In my slothoofstuk oorweeg ek wat gebeur as die kwessies wat deur die bogenoemde performatiewe taal-aktiwiteite opgeroep word – vrae rondom die self en die subjek, outoriteit en representasie – binne ‘n forensiese raamwerk na die diskoers van getuienis oorgedra word

Sahrawi communities in the Western Saharan region of northwest Africa have experienced a series of radical shifts over the past century from decentralized nomadic tribal organization to colonial rule under the Spanish Sahara (1884-1975) and annexation by Morocco and Mauritania in 1975. The international dispute over the future of the Western Sahara remains unresolved between the Moroccan government that administers the territory and the Sahrawi opposition that seeks self-determination under the leadership of the Polisario Front. In this context, this dissertation explores the lived experience and social memory of Sahrawis affected by conflict, diaspora, and urbanization over the past thirty-five years by examining multivocal expressions of ethnic and gender identity, nationalism, and citizenship in personal narratives and oral poetry in Hassaniyya Arabic. Through modes of everyday speech and verbal performances, Sahrawis living in the undisputed region of Morocco and the disputed Western Sahara exhibit varying political allegiances linked to tribal and national affiliations and political economic factors. Pro-independence activists negotiate public and clandestine aspirations for an independent state with the realities of living under Moroccan administration while refugees in Algeria employ performance genres to appeal for political and humanitarian support in the international community and maintain communication in the Sahrawi diaspora. Intergenerational perspectives between Sahrawis born before and after the 1975 cleavage reveal key divergences between the older generation that retains an active memory of nomadic livelihoods and pre-national tribal organization, the middle generation affected by a massive shift to urban residence and compulsory postcolonial nationalism, and the younger generation raised primarily in urban environments and refugee camps. Across generations, Sahrawi women have retained a prominent role in maintaining tribal and family ties and serving as leaders in nationalist and social movements.

This project foregrounds the work and perspectives of spoken word poets of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) descent in connection to the NYC slam poetry scene. I trace the parallel racialization of MENA diaspora communities in the US and the development of slam poetry as a space for raising “othered” voices. Through ethnographic analysis, I consider slam poetry as a site of intersectional struggle, arguing that the engagement of MENA diaspora poets with this scene reveals the ways in which poetry both constitutes resistance to discursive violence through representation and works to mobilize audiences against tangible structures of violence.

More than 2.6 million troops have deployed in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, surveys reveal that more than half feel “disconnected” from their civilian counterparts, and this feeling persists despite ongoing efforts, in the academy and elsewhere, to help returning veterans overcome physical and mental wounds, seek an education, and find meaningful ways to contribute to society after taking off the uniform. This dissertation argues that Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans struggle with reassimilation because they lack healthy, complete models of veteran identity to draw upon in their postwar lives, a problem they’re working through collectively in literature and artwork. The war veteran—returning home transformed by the harsh realities of military training and service, having seen humanity at its extremes, and interacting with a society apathetic toward his or her experiences—should engage in the act of storytelling. This act of sharing experiences and crafting-self subverts stereotypes. Storytelling, whether in a book read by millions, or in a single conversation with a close family member, should instruct civilians on the topic of human resiliency; it should instruct veterans on the topic of homecoming. But typically, veterans do not tell stories. Civilians create barriers to storytelling in the form of hollow platitudes—“thank you for your service” or “I can never understand what you’ve been through”—disconnected from the meaning of wartime service itself. The dissonance between veteran and civilian only becomes more complicated when one considers the implicit demands and expectations attached to patriotism. These often well-intentioned gestures and government programs fail to convey a message of appreciation because they refuse to convey a message of acceptance; the exceptional treatment of veterans by larger society implies also that they are insufficient, broken, or incomplete. So, many veterans chose conformity and silence, adopting one of two identities available to them: the forever pitied “Wounded Warrior” or the superficially praised “Hero.” These identities are not complete. They’re not even identities as much as they are collections of rumors, misrepresentations, and expectations of conformity. Once an individual veteran begins unconsciously performing the “Wounded Warrior” or “Hero” character, the number of potential outcomes available in that individual’s life is severely diminished. Society reinforces a feeling among veterans that they are “different.” This shared experience has resulted in commiseration, camaraderie, and also the proliferation of veterans’ creative communities. As storytellers, the members of these communities are restoring meaning to veteran-civilian discourse by privileging the nuanced experiences of the individual over stereotypes and emotionless rhetoric. They are instructing on the topics of war and homecoming, producing fictional and nonfictional representations of the veteran capable of competing with stereotypes, capable of reassimilation. The Introduction establishes the existence of veteran culture, deconstructs notions of there being a single or binary set of veteran identities, and critiques the social and cultural rhetoric used to maintain symbolic boundaries between veterans and civilians. It begins by establishing an approach rooted in interdisciplinary literary theory, taking veteran identity as its topic of consideration and the American unconscious as the text it seeks to examine, asking readers to suspend belief in patriotic rhetoric long enough to critically examine veteran identity as an apparatus used to sell war to each generation of new recruits. Patriotism, beyond the well-meaning gestures and entitlements afforded to veterans, also results in feelings of “difference,” in the veteran feeling apart from larger society. The inescapability of veteran “difference” is a trait which sets it apart from other cultures, and it is one bolstered by inaccurate and, at times, offensive portrayals of veterans in mass media and Hollywood films such as The Manchurian Candidate (1962), First Blood (1982), or Taxi Driver (1976). To understand this inescapability the chapter engages with theories of race, discussing the Korean War veteran in Home (2012) and other works by Toni Morrison to directly and indirectly explore descriptions of “difference” by African Americans and “others” not in positions of power. From there, the chapter traces veteran identity back to the Italian renaissance, arguing that modern notions of veteran identity are founded upon fears of returning veterans causing chaos and disorder. At the same time, writers such as Sebastian Junger, who are intimately familiar with veteran culture, repeatedly emphasize the camaraderie and “tribal” bonds found among members of the military, and instead of creating symbolic categories in which veterans might exist exceptionally as “Heroes,” or pitied as “Wounded Warriors,” the chapter argues that the altruistic nature which leads recruits to war, their capabilities as leaders and educators, and the need of larger society for examples of human resiliency are more appropriate starting points for establishing veteran identity. The Introduction is followed by an independent “Example” section, a brief examination of a student veteran named “Bingo,” one who demonstrates an ability to challenge, even employ veteran stereotypes to maintain his right to self-definition. Bingo’s story, as told in a “spotlight” article meant to attract student veterans to a college campus, portrays the veteran as a “Wounded Warrior” who overcomes mental illness and the scars of war through education, emerging as an exceptional example—a “Hero”—that other student veterans can model by enrolling at the school. Bingo’s story sets the stage for close examinations of the “Hero” and the “Wounded Warrior” in the first and second chapters. Chapter One deconstructs notions of heroism, primarily the belief that all veterans are “Heroes.” The chapter examines military training and indoctrination, Medal of Honor award citations, and film examples such as All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Heroes for Sale (1933), Sergeant York (1941), and Top Gun (1986) to distinguish between actual feats of heroism and “Heroes” as they are presented in patriotic rhetoric. The chapter provides the Medal of Honor citations attached to awards presented to Donald Cook, Dakota Meyer, and Kyle Carpenter, examining the postwar lives of Meyer and Carpenter, identifying attempts by media and government officials to appropriate heroism—to steal the right to self-definition possessed by these men. Among these Medal of Honor recipients one finds two types of heroism: Sacrificing Heroes give something of themselves to protect others; Attacking Heroes make a difference during battle offensively. Enduring Heroes, the third type of heroism discussed in the chapter, are a new construct. Colloquially, and for all intents and purposes, an Enduring Hero is simply a veteran who enjoys praise and few questions. Importantly, veterans enjoy the “Hero Treatment” in exchange for silence and conforming to larger narratives which obfuscate past wars and pave the way for new ones. This chapter engages with theorists of gender—such as Jack Judith Halberstam, whose Female Masculinities (1998) anticipates the agency increasingly available to women through military service; like Leo Braudy, whose From Chivalry to Terrorism (2003) traces the historical relationship between war and gender before commenting on the evolution of military masculinity—to discuss the relationship between heroism and agency, begging a question: What do veterans have to lose from the perpetuation of stereotypes? This question frames a detailed examination of William A. Wellman’s film, Heroes for Sale (1933), in the chapter’s final section. This story of stolen valor and the Great Depression depicts the homecoming of a WWI veteran separated from his heroism. The example, when combined with a deeper understanding of the intersection between veteran identity and gender, illustrates not only the impact of stolen valor in the life of a legitimate hero, but it also comments on the destructive nature of appropriation, revealing the ways in which a veteran stereotypes rob service men and women of the right to draw upon memories of military service which complete with those stereotypes. The military “Hero” occupies a moral high ground, but most conceptions of military “Heroes” are socially constructed advertisements for war. Real heroes are much rarer. And, as the Medal of Honor recipients discussed in the chapter reveal, they, too, struggle with lifelong disabilities as well as constant attempts by society to appropriate their narratives. Chapter Two traces the evolution of the modern “Wounded Warrior” from depictions of cowardice in Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage (1895), to the denigration of World War I veterans afflicted with Shell Shock, to Kevin Powers’s Iraq War novel, The Yellow Birds (2012). As with “Heroes,” “Wounded Warriors” perform a stereotype in place of an authentic, individualized identity, and the chapter uses Walt Kowalski, the protagonist of Clint Eastwood’s film, Gran Torino (2008), as its major example. The chapter discusses “therapeutic culture,” Judith Butler’s work on identity-formation, and Eva Illouz’s examination of a culture obsessed with trauma to comment on veteran performances of victimhood. Butler’s attempts to conceive of new identities absent the influence of systems of definition rooted in the state, in particular, reveal power in the opposite of silence, begging another question: What do civilians have to gain from the perpetuation of veteran stereotypes? Largely, the chapter finds, the “Wounded Warrior” persists in the minds of civilians who fear the veteran’s capacity for violence. A broken, damaged veteran is less of a threat. The story of the “Wounded Warrior” is not one of sacrifice. The “Wounded Warrior” exists after sacrifice, beyond any measure of “honor” achieved in uniform. “Wounded Warriors” are not expected to find a cure because the wound itself is an apparatus of the state that is commodified and injected into the currency of emotional capitalism. This chapter argues that military service and a damaged psyche need not always occur together. Following the second chapter, a close examination of “The Bear That Stands,” a short story by Suzanne S. Rancourt which confronts the author’s sexual assault while serving in the Marines, offers an alternative to both the “Hero” and the “Wounded Warrior” stereotypes. Rancourt, a veteran “Storyteller,” gives testimony of that crime, intervening in social conceptions of veteran identity to include a female perspective. As with the example of Bingo, the author demonstrates an innate ability to recognize and challenge the stereotypes discussed in the first and second chapters. This “Example” sets the stage for a more detailed examination of “Veteran Storytellers” and their communities in the final chapter. Chapter Three looks for examples of veteran “difference,” patriotism, the “Wounded Warrior,” and the “Hero” in nonfiction, fiction, and artwork emerging from the creative arts community, Military Experience and the Arts, an organization which provides workshops, writing consultation, and publishing venues to veterans and their families. The chapter examines veteran “difference” in a short story by Bradley Johnson, “My Life as a Soldier in the ‘War on Terror.’” In “Cold Day in Bridgewater,” a work of short fiction by Jerad W. Alexander, a veteran must confront the inescapability of that difference as well as expectations of conformity from his bigoted, civilian bartender. The final section analyzes artwork by Tif Holmes and Giuseppe Pellicano, which deal with the problems of military sexual assault and the effects of war on the family, respectively. Together, Johnson, Alexander, Holmes, and Pellicano demonstrate skills in recognizing stereotypes, crafting postwar identities, and producing alternative representations of veteran identity which other veterans can then draw upon in their own homecomings. Presently, no unified theory of veteran identity exists. This dissertation begins that discussion, treating individual performances of veteran identity, existing historical, sociological, and psychological scholarship about veterans, and cultural representations of the wars they fight as equal parts of a single text. Further, it invites future considerations of veteran identity which build upon, challenge, or refute its claims. Conversations about veteran identity are the opposite of silence; they force awareness of war’s uncomfortable truths and homecoming’s eventual triumphs. Complicating veteran identity subverts conformity; it provides a steady stream of traits, qualities, and motivations that veterans use to craft postwar selves. The serious considerations of war and homecoming presented in this text will be useful for Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans attempting to piece together postwar identities; they will be useful to scholars hoping to facilitate homecoming for future generations of war veterans. Finally, the Afterword to the dissertation proposes a program for reassimilation capable of harnessing the veteran’s symbolic and moral authority in such a way that self-definition and homecoming might become two parts of a single act.

This chapter focuses on the poetry of Isaac Ibn Kalpon. Isaac came from a North African Jewish family and was born in the middle of the tenth century. He lived a while in Cordoba and spent a great deal of his life wandering from one city to another. His poems are full of complaints against his patrons and contemporaries. However, he had a firm friend in his considerably younger contemporary, Samuel ha-Nagid. The chapter then presents Isaac’s poem A Present of Cheese. The poem talks about a ‘dearest friend’ who gifted the poet ‘a portion of cheese’ At the end, the poet asks ‘And what’s the good of cheese, when I am dry with thirst?’ Isaac died some time after 1020.

This chapter examines the poetry of Joseph Ibn Abithur. Joseph was born in the middle of the tenth century in Merida and lived in Cordoba, which was the centre of Muslim and Jewish civilisation in Spain at this time. There is a tradition, preserved by Abraham ibn Daoud, that he gave an Arabic explanation of the Talmud to the Caliph al-Hakim II. Joseph was surrounded by controversy. He was forced to leave Spain after making an unsuccessful bid for the intellectual leadership of the Jewish community, and he spent the latter part of his life journeying in the lands of the Middle East. He is known as a poet mainly for his liturgical work, much of which was adopted into the prayer-books of the Provencal, Catalonian, and North African Jews. Ultimately, his poetry is more akin to that of the piyyutim of Eastern Mediterranean Jewry than to the ‘new’ poetry beginning to flourish in Spain. The chapter then looks at three of his poems: Sanctification, A Song for the New Year, and Lament on the Devastation of the Land of Israel (1012).

Throughout the Middle East and North Africa, Bedouin herders continue to practice their oral tradition of Nabati poetry. This chapter examines the ways that Nabati poetry is produced and shared across social media platforms. The chapter focuses on a Nabati poet, Hissa Hilal, who performed her work on the Million’s Poet reality TV competition show. Her work sparked new debates about the work of women Nabati poets as well as Bedouin women’s rights throughout the region.

This chapter assesses the poetry of Samuel ha-Nagid. Samuel ha-Levi hen Joseph ibn Nagrela was born in Cordoba in 993. After the invasion of the North African Berbers in 1013, he was forced to leave Cordoba, which was sacked, and he settled in Malaga, which was, at this time, part of the Berber province of Granada. The story goes that, while in Malaga, his skill as an Arabic calligraphist came to the attention of the vizier Abu al-Kasim ibn al-Arif, and he was appointed the latter’s private secretary. Before the vizier died, he recommended Samuel to Habbus, king of Granada, who made him vizier in 1027. The Jews henceforth called him Nagid (Prince) as a mark of his eminence within the Jewish community. Samuel was, at one and the same time, poet, rabbi, statesman, and general, and distinguished in each one of these fields. His poems are some of the finest in the whole range of Hebrew literature, and his expertise in the elucidation of Biblical and rabbinic literature was acknowledged by all. His poems are noteworthy for the way in which he was able to inform the artificiality and occasional preciosity of construction with deep and obviously sincere content. Ultimately, his long martial poems are unique in the poetic output of the Spanish Jews.

Cristian Aliaga (b. 1962, Tres Cuervos, Province of Buenos Aires) is a writer, journalist, publisher, and lecturer. Unlike most important contemporary Argentine writers, Aliaga is based not in Buenos Aires, but in Chubut Province, in the far south. As well as a highly respected poet, Aliaga is also a master of a genre that we might call the travel prose-poem. Linked to the traditions of travel writing, politically-committed poetry, and the sociological essay – all with deep roots in Argentina – Aliaga’s mini-chronicles, difficult fully to classify, give an intensely emotional, yet precise vision of specific sites in Argentina, the Americas, North Africa and Europe....

This chapter establishes the intense desire and nostalgia for Baghdad as the Abbasid Caliphate's cosmopolitan capital and its centrality in the Muslim imaginary, among the near and the far. Poetry, historical chronicles, and scholarly literature from Muslim Spain in the west, Yemen in the south, and Egypt, western North Africa, geographical Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia, and India further east richly illustrate a shared perception among interconnected literary elites about the Abbasids' temporal and spiritual preeminence, despite all of their political reversals. For many premodern Muslims, the world without a caliph was so unimaginable that it boded the imminent end of time itself—an eschatological interpretation that reverses contemporaneous Christian views of empire.