Syrian poet ranked second in international poetry competition
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – The Syrian Kurdish poet, Jiwan Tatar, recently ranked second in the Mediterranean Poetry Prize in its special session for the years 2020-2021.
The Mediterranean Poetry Prize is organized at the Palazzo Firenze in the Italian capital, Rome, by twenty European and American universities and institutions. The aim of the contest is to unite the peoples of the Mediterranean in poetry.
“The first international session of the award was opened for poets in French, Italian, Albanian, Spanish and Arabic. I won the second prize in the Arabic section, after the first prize was shared between two other poets,” North Press Reported Tatar.
He added, he was supposed to be present at the awards ceremony in Rome, but issues related to airports and the coronavirus prevented him from attending.
Tatar has five prose publications: Heavy Air 2010, The Dead Speak In Vain 2016, The Book of Things 2018, A Thin Line of Sorrow 2018, and Elegant Death Chambers 2021.
Tatar worked in the radio before heading the editor of the Arabic version of the “RE” electronic cultural platform, and had previously participated in the Bab al-Hara series as an actor.
Talking about the diversity of his works, Tatar said: “I do what I love and adore, or when I have a spiritual relationship with that thing. Diversity does not matter; I am only interested in doing what I love.”
“As a Kurd, it hurts me to write in Arabic! This is my own feeling, but I make up for this pain by translating from Kurdish into Arabic,” he noted.
It is worth noting that Tatar has translated more than eight books from Kurdish, which varied between stories, poetry and novels issued by different Arab publishing houses, including: The novel When Fish get Thirsty by Halim Youssef, and The Last Picture of the World, a collection of short stories by the storyteller Ibrahim Seydo Aydogan.
Tatar, who also won the award of the Second Forum for Prose Poem in Cairo 2010, is awaiting the release of his new book, “To Knowledge Turn,” with a grant from the Goethe-Institute and the Foundation for Independent Culture Directions, in addition to his translation of the two novels: Flying with Broken Wings and 99 Scattered Beads by Halim Youssef.