Kacem Haddad

• Name — Qassim Haddad • Native Name — قاسم حداد • Born — 1948 • Birthplace — Muharraq, Bahrain • Occupation — poet • Years Active — 1970–present

Qassim Haddad was born in Bahrain in 1948 and did not complete his secondary education, having educated himself over the years. Haddad first rose to prominence with his poetry that contained revolutionary and political themes such as freedom. He published his first poetic collection titled Good Omen in 1970 and has since published more than 16 books, including Majnun Laila, a book of poetry and paintings, and a book of poetry in collaboration with Saudi photographer Saleh al-Azzaz. In 2007, Haddad created controversy when he reworked the Arabic classic Layla and Majnun, with Marcel Khalife which fundamentalists believed undermined Islamic morals. He worked in the public library from 1968 to 1975, but was in and out of political incarceration for five years’ total between 1973 and 1980. In 1980, he joined the Culture and Arts Department at the Ministry of Information. His column, "وقت للكتابة" (“Time to Write”), has been syndicated weekly in a number of Arab publications since the early 1980s as well. His poems have been extensively translated, and he retired from the Ministry at the end of 1997. Haddad is also the co-founder and chairman of the Bahraini Writers' Union.

He is married and has three children, including his son the noted composer Mohammed Haddad (born 1975) and his daughters Mehyar and noted photographer Tufool. He has three granddaughters (Amina, Ramz, and Lamar).

Among the most prominent translations of Haddad's work are the collection علاج المسافة (“Distance Therapy”), rendered as Rimedio per la distanza in a translation to Italian by Fawzi Al Delmi by San Marco dei Giustiniani in Genoa, Italy. The American University in Cairo also launched a translation project spearheaded by John Verlenden (Professor of Rhetoric and Authorship) and Ferial Ghazoul (Professor of English Language and Comparative Literature, funding it through a $100,000 grant from the United States National Endowment for the Humanities. Haddad's website جهة الشعر (“Jehat”) was launched in 1996 and posted Modern Standard Arabic poetry in its original form and translated into seven languages. In March 2018, however, new additions to the site were suspended due to lack of funds. Haddad was awarded the “Arab Creativity Award” from the Lebanese Cultural Forum in Paris in 2000 and won the Al Owais Award in the poetry category in the 2000-2001 cycle. In 2017, he won the Aboul-Qacem Echebbi Award on its 2017 return to Tunisia after a hiatus since the Tunisian Revolution of 2011, along with the third Poet Mohammed Al-Thubaiti Prize in Saudi Arabia. In 2020, he was regaled at the Fifth Cairo International Forum for Arab Poetry. Between 2008 and 2015, Haddad received four scholarships for literary residencies in Germany. He completed the book طرفة بن الوردة (“The Rose of Tarafa”) during a 2008-2011 residency at the German Commission for Cultural Exchange in Berlin, followed by a 2012 Jean-Jacques Rousseau Fellowship from the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, a 2013 grant from the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Cologne, and a 2014 PEN Centre Germany in Munich. These allowed him to complete the following freelance projects, besides the aforementioned طرفة بن الوردة: • تجربتيّ (“My Experience”) • أيها الفحم يا سيدي (“Oh, Sir Charcoal”) • لستِ جرحاً ولا خنجراً (“You Are Neither a Wound Nor a Dagger”) • نزهة الملاك (“Angel’s Outing”) • فتنة السؤال (“The Sedition of Question”) • النهايات تنأى (“Endings Disperse”) • سماء عليلة (“An Ailing Sky”) • تعديل في موسيقى الحجرة (“Revisions to Chamber Music”) • مكابدات الأمل (“The Struggles of Hope”) • يوميات بيت هاينريش بول (“Diary from the Heinrich Böll Foundation”) • ثلاثون بحراً للغرق (“Thirty Seas of Drowning”) • مثل وردةٍ تقلّد عطراً (“Like a Rose Imitating Perfume”)

Three phases can be distinguished in Haddad's poetic career. The first consists of his first three collections: البشارة (“Portents,” 1970), خروج رأس الحسين من المدن الخائنة (“The Exodus of Ras Al-Husayn from the Treacherous Cities,” 1972), and الدم الثاني (“The Second Blood,” 1975). In these three collections, his rhetoric and lyricism rejects the status quo and calls for revolution. The allusions are often to mythic figures such as Sisyphus, Scheherezade, Penelope, and Antarah ibn Shaddad, as well as to modern colonial resistance symbols such as Che Guevara, Vietnam, and Palestine. The second phase includes the collections قلب الحب (“Love’s Heart”) and القيامة (“Judgment Day”), both published in 1980. These more experimentally introspective works transform the subjective ego into an objective collective one and include richer, more transcendent language. Many collections through 1991 continued to build on this theme. The third stage builds on his interest in aesthetics, including linguistic experimentation and the use of sound, symbols, and metaphor. His 1983 collection شظايا (“Splinters”) is a long poem applying shock and tension to the lyric approach of the era. His fourth stage centers on collaborations with artists in other media. These works include الجواشن (“Armour”), a long-form work co-written by novelist Amin Saleh; the aforementioned أخبارمجنون ليلى (“Majnun Laila,” painted by Iraqi artist Dia Azzawi and set to music by Marcel Khalife); جوه مع (“Faces”) with Bahraini painter Ebrahim Busaad, singer-songwriter Khaled El Sheikh, the poet Adunis, and the playwright Abdullah Youssef. المستحيل الأزرق (“The Blue Impossible”) with photographer Saleh al-Azzaz is a recent highlight, as are طرفة بن الوردة and أيها الفحم يا سيدي, both among his residency works and featuring the work of his photographer daughter Tufool and his composer son Mohammed.

Festival appearances • Festival — Year — Host country • 3rd Al-Marbad Poetry Festival (Baghdad) — 1974 — Iraq • 10th Asilah Arts Festival (Asilah) — 1987 — Morocco • Spanish-Arabic Poetry Festival (Sanaa) — 1990 — Yemen • 14th Cairo International Film Festival — 1990 — Egypt • Qurain Cultural Festival — 1994 — Kuwait • 1st Arab Poetry Festival (Muscat) — 1995 — Oman • 3rd Qurain Cultural Festival — 1996 — Kuwait • Cairo Creative Poetry Festival — 1996 — Egypt • Al-Babtain Spring Poetry Festival (Al-Adwani Cycle) — 1996 — Abu Dhabi • Rabat Poetry Festival — 1997 — Morocco • 16th Jerash Festival — 1997 — Jordan • 5th Gulf Cooperation Council Theatre Festival — 1997 — Kuwait • Amsterdam Immigration Foundation Arab Culture Festival — 1998 — Netherlands • Les Voix de la Mediterranée Festival (Lodève) — 1999 — France • Arab World Institute Spring Poetry Festival (Paris) — 2000 — France • 2nd Arab Poetry Festival (House of Jordanian Poetry, Amman) — 2001 — Jordan • German-Arab Poetry Festival (Sanaa) — 2001 — Yemen • International Poetry Festival of Medellín (Medellín) — 2001 — Colombia • 1st Jableh Cultural Festival (near Latakia) — 2004 — Syria • 11th Qurain Cultural Festival — 2004 — Kuwait • 26th Asilah Arts Festival — 2004 — Morocco • 4th Al-Mutanabbi International Poetry Festival (Zurich) — 2004 — Switzerland • 14th Amman International Theatre Festival (6th Arab Theatre and Poetry Session) — 2007 — Jordan • 8th Karneval der Kulturen (Berlin) — 2008 — Germany • Arabesque: Arts of the Arab World Festival (Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.) — 2009 — United States • Jordan Festival (Amman) — 2009 — Jordan • Poetry on the Road Festival (Bremen) — 2011 — Germany • International Festival of Literature and of Young People's Literature — 2011 — Algeria • 10th Les Voix de la Mediterranée Festival — 2011 — France • 33rd Asilah Arts Festival — 2011 — Morocco • 1st Cairo International Poetry Festival — 2014 — Egypt • Khan al-Funoun — 2016 — Jordan • Sharjah International Book Fair — 2016 — United Arab Emirates • 38th Asilah Arts Festival — 2016 — Morocco • Voix Vives de Méditerranée en Méditerranée Festival (Sète) — 2017 — France • 50th Cairo International Book Fair Golden Jubilee — 2019 — Egypt • 34th Jerash Festival — 2019 — Jordan

Seminar appearances • Seminar — Year — Host country • Joint Cultural Work Symposium — 1985 — Kuwait/Saudi Arabia • Georgetown University Centennial Poetry Symposium (Washington, D.C.) — 1989 — United States • Palestinian Intifada Symposium (Sanaa) — 1989 — Yemen • Aboul-Qacem Echebbi International Symposium (Fez) — 1994 — Morocco • Al-Arabi Sympsoium on Arab Culture and the Prospects for Digital Publishing — 2001 — Kuwait • Amal Abul-Qassem Donqol Symposium (Achievements and Values) (Supreme Council of Culture) — 2003 — Egypt • UNESCO Symposium on Book Publication — 2005 — France • Al-Babtain Symposium for Poetic Creativity — 2013 — Morocco

Convention appearances • Convention — Year — Host country • 1st Lebanese Writers’ Union Conference (Beirut) — 1984 — Lebanon • Literary Criticism Conference (Towards a New Vision of Literary Theories, University of Bahrain) — 1993 — Bahrain • 2nd Lebanese Writers’ Union Conference (Beirut) — 1994 — Lebanon • German-Arab Poetry Conference (Sanaa) — 2000 — Yemen • PEN Centre Germany Conference — 2012 — Germany

International conference appearances • Conference — Year — Host country • French-Arab Poetry Encounter (Grenoble/Rabat) — 1986 — France/Morocco • Arab Poetry Encounter (Nantes) — 1990 — France • 1st Arab Poetry Forum — 1997 — Tunisia • 1st Arab Cultural Forum (Beirut) — 1998 — Lebanon • Saadi Shirazi Forum (Tehran) — 2000 — Iran • 2nd Dar al-Mada Cultural Festival (Damascus) — 2001 — Syria • 1st Young Arab Poets’ Forum (Sanaa): The 1990s and Prospects for Poetic Writing — 2004 — Yemen • 3rd Cairo Forum for Creative Arab Novelists — 2005 — Egypt • Arab Poetry Conference — 2006 — Morocco • 5th Cairo International Forum for Arab Poetry — 2020 — Egypt

Critical studies • Year — Title — Researcher — Institution • 1997 — "تعددية الشكل في الكتابة الشعرية الحديثة - إنجاز قاسم حداد نموذجاً" (“Pluralism of Form in Modern Poetic Writing: Examples from the Work of Qassim Haddad”) — Mujib Zahrani — Gulf Poetry Festival (Bahrain) • 1998 — "الخطاب النقدي عند قاسم حداد وصلته بتجربته الشعرية - رؤية نقدية" (“Qassim Haddad’s Critical Discourse and its Connection to His Poetic Experience: A Critical Study”) — Abdullah Ahmad al-Muhanna — Kuwait University Journal of Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies • 2004 — "قاسم حداد: شاعر المخيلة" (“Qassim Haddad: Poet of Imagination”) — Mohammed Abdul Muttalib — 26th Asilah Arts Festival • 2007 — "انماط الصورة في شعر قاسم حداد ديوان القيامة انموذجا" (“Visual Patterns in Qassim Haddad’s ‘Judgment Day’” — Ashwaq Ghazi Safih Al-Yasiri — University of Basrah Centre for Arab Studies • 2013 — "بنية اللغة الشعرية عند قاسم حداد" (“The Structure of Qassim Haddad’s Poetic Language”) — Omar Hasan al-Ameri — Yarmouk University Faculty of Arts, Department of Arabic Language and Literature • 2015 — "سيمياء البياض في شعر قاسم حداد" (“Decaying Whiteness in the Poetry of Qassim Haddad”) — Hussein Al-Ghadiri — University of Bahrain College of Arts • 2016 — "التعالق الاستعاري في الخطاب الشعري عند قاسم حداد (طرفة بن الوردة انموذجاً)" (“Allegory in the Poetic Discource of Qasim Haddad’s ‘The Rose of Tarafa’”) — Ali Sarmad Hussein/Farhan Badri Al-Harbi — University of Babylon College of Humanities • 2019 — "التجربة الشعرية لدى قاسم حداد" (“The Poetic Experience of Qassim Haddad”) — Tariq Fattouh — Nizwa Magazine • 2019 — "القصيدة التأويل، أو الشعر بينما يحدث: كيف ينظر قاسم حداد إلى العالم من خلال اللغة؟" (“Poetry As It Happens: How Does Qassim Haddad View the World Through Language?”) — Hatem al-Zahrani — Ma3a (online learning platform) • 2019 — "عالم قاسم حداد الشعري - دراسة نقدية" (“The World of Qassim Haddad: A Critical Study”) — Abdullah Khalifa — Ninawa Publishing, Damascus, Syria • 2019 — "أسلوبيّة تشكّل صورة الوطن ودلالتها في قصيدة “الصهيل” للشاعر قاسم حداد" (“Style’s Influence on a Nation’s Image in Qassim Haddad’s ‘The Neighing’”) — Fatima Sobhi Yazbek — Lebanese University Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Arabic Language and Literature • 2020 — "خطاب المركز والهامش في شعر قاسم حداد: دراسة في ضوء علم النص" (“Discourse Between the Center and the Margin in the Poetry of Qassim Haddad: A Study in the Light of Textual Science”) — Fida al-Aidi — Hashemite University College of Arts, Department of Arabic Language and Literature • 2020 — "الكونُ موقفٌ: الشعريّة والنبوءة في أعمال قاسم حداد" (“The Universe Is a Stance: Poetics and Prophesy in the Works of Qassim Haddad”) — Miguel Merino — Georgetown University Center for Contemporary Arab Studies