The Poetics of Kurdish Resistance

About

As a minority divided among four nation-states(Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria), Kurds have been subjected to various degrees of political and cultural suppression, at times amounting to genocide. Kurdish oral and written literature has been a key component of the Kurdish political struggle for recognition and freedom and the very site of resistance and remembrance throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In this panel, academics from the Universities of Exeter and Swansea discuss paths of resistance in Kurdish literature by examining the role poetry, prose and songs in accompanying as well as inspiring the political movements and keeping the resistance alive. The panellists will shed light on various modes of Kurdish literary production by discussing their research on modern Kurdish poetry, prose and traditional songs and how these forms were employed to reconstruct the past and record traumas as well as envisaging a future. The role of women in Kurdish resistance literature will also be presented and the event will be concluded with a poetry reading by Renas Babakir. a young poetess from Iraqi Kurdistan, whose poems touch on the silenced stories of conservative societies.