Sherko Bekas

Sherko Bekas, one of today’s greatest Kurdish poets, is the son of the well-known Kurdish patriotic poet, Faeeq Bekas. Born in Iraqi Kurdistan’s Sulaymani Provience. Sherko’s poetry has been translated into many languages, including Arabic, Italian, Swedish, French, and English, and it has also been published in Kurdish newspapers and magazines in all parts of Kurdistan. In a recent 1990 literary competition in Europe, Sherko was awarded the Noble Prize for his poetry. As of current, he has conglomerated six of his “Dewan” poetry books into one: a single 992 pg work entitled “Dewani Sherko Bekas”.

another biography

Sherko Bekes, son of Faiq Bekes, is one of the most famous Kurdish poets. Sherko was born in 1940 in Sulaymania in Southern Kurdistan. He was educated in Sulaymania and Bagdad and published his first collection of poems there in 1968. His poems reflect his close association with the Kurdish liberation movement which he joined in 1965, working in the movement's radio station - the Voice of Kurdistan. During the period 1984 - 1987, he lived with the Kurdish peshmergas (freedom fighters). Since 1987, Sherko Bekes has lived in Sweden where continues to write. In 1987 he was awarded the Swedish PEN Club's Tucholsky Prize. In the same year he was awarded the freedom of the city of Florence. (Summary from Index on Censorship, by H Sinjari, 1988)

If from inside of all my poetry
You take out the flower,
From the four seasons
One of my seasons will die.

If you take out my lover,
Two of my seasons will die.

If you take out the bread,
Three of my seasons will die.

If you take out the freedom
My year will die and I will die also.

Autumn

Today autum passed

and left this region.

when I visited

the abandoned place,

I saw

that he had left behind

a sigh.

I took this sigh home.

It appeared custom-tailored

for one of my poems.

The Chair

The chair

on which the poet had been killed

was a witness.

It stayed alive

until it saw the death of the executioner

and freedom came upon it.

Love song

It was the first time that a sugar-cane

rebelled against her field.

This slender and pale maiden

had given her heart to the wind.

But the field did not consent to thier

marriage.

consumed with love she said,

"He is to me beyond compare.

This is where my heart lies."

To punish the maiden

whose eyes were already wet with dew,

the indegnant field called the woodpecker

who drilled a few holes

into the heart and the body of the plant.

From this day on

she was a flute,

and the hand of the wind

endowed her wounds with melodies.

She has been singing ever since for the

world.