Poetry and Politics in Contemporary Bedouin Society
Book Review
Poetry and Politics in Contemporary Bedouin Society
CLIVE HOLES and SAID SALMAN ABU ATHERA
Reading: Ithaca Press, 2009, xv þ 351 pp., £49.99 (hbk), ISBN 978-0-863-723384
From: Borg, Gert(2011) ‘Poetry and Politics in Contemporary Bedouin Society, by Clive Holes and Said
Salman Abu Athera’, Middle Eastern Literatures, 14: 1, 96 — 99, DOI: 10.1080/1475262X.2011.550480
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1475262X.2011.550480
What to say about a book that Roger Allen in his Foreword to this book already qualifies as an extremely important collection of popular Arabic poetry? The authors have gathered, selected, recorded, translated and commented on 40 poems and one text in saj‘, composed by five Bedouin poets from Sinai and Southern Jordan. The language level of choice for these poets was their own dialect, which qualifies their poems as nabatı poetry. The present publication is not the first book in this field; as main contributors to this area of literary and linguistic studies the names of Sowayan, Kurpershoek and Palva come to mind, to name only a few Both authors are distinguished specialists in their fields of Arabic dialects, so expectations are high. In many respects these expectations are totally met, but the most outstanding feature of the present publication is its accessibility, which is mainly due to the lively and adequate translation of the Arabic texts; adequate first and foremost in the sense that these translations convey the tone and humour—sometimes cynical—of the original. Many non-Arabists might well be astonished to find these political and social views, witty and critical, that are widely held in the Arab world, but are hardly known in the West.
This book is about nabatı poetry. It defines this kind of poetry as ‘an oral art, . . . poetry . . . composed in the vernacular’ (p. IX). This definition raises a few questions that are partly answered elsewhere, but some aspects deserve more elaboration. Some of the poems presented here are said to have been published in newspapers, which leaves open the question whether or not they were composed orally.
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Filed under: Books, Papers, Arab Poetry, Bedouin, Book Review, literature, Middle East, Middle Eastern Studies, Nabati Poetry, Poetry
