'Poetry as History'

Professor Mohammed Sharafuddin

Chair, Dept of English, Arab Open University, Kuwait

Poetry can be a decisive tool in recording historical facts, especially those fraught with controversies and personal gains and losses. Many can write history but few can write it poetically, that is, with an eye towards the future. Unlike many historians, poets are born with visions that transcend political and racial ideologies. The case of modern Yemeni poets is unique in that it does not only explain history but can help us understand many controversies that make the Middle East such a complex and hard to understand culture.

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Excerpt from Poetry as History abstract

“No one appreciates history as the poet, for he does not confirm what others do.”—Joseph Brodsky

No significant attention has been given to Yemeni poetry as a documentation of history except in some limited cases. With the appearance of new historicist theories poetry can possess elements that shed light on some controversial events. Poetry is distinguished from history, because it transcends the event itself to reach down to the human spirit that originated it. Hence the poet can be more reliable in focusing on important sides oftentimes ignored by the historian.

This is what I try to show in my paper, which references an encounter between Yemen ’s most important modern poet,  Mohammed Al Zubeiri, and Imam Yahya in 1947. The only written record of this important meeting is available in a poem by the late Ahmed Al Shami, who was also a friend of Zubeiri and whose poem espouses the revolutionary ideals of Al Zubeiri against the despotism of Imam Yahya.

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Dr. Mohammed Sharafuddin is presently Chair of the English Department at the Open University, Kuwait. Before that he was Professor of Arabic and Classics at George Washington University (2002-2006) and taught extensively at several institutions such as the University of Minnesota, University of Sana’a, Yemenia University, Saba University. He is the only Yemeni scholar to have been a Fulbright Scholar three times within 20 years of his educational career.

Dr. Sharafuddin has a Ph.D. from the University of York, England. His research focuses on using literature to explain politics and religious differences among cultures and nations. His book, Islam and Romantic Orienatalism (London: IB Tauris, 1994) is an attempt to show how differences are not always negative for they can enhance relations between cultures and positive elements in bringing about a reconciliation between Islam and the West. He is presently working on an Arabic translation of Rumi’s poetry into Arabic.