Magin_Edward-thesis

5. Analysis of Northern Kurdish poetry
5.1 Introduction to the corpus
In June 2010, I went to the Northern Kurdish speaking area of Northern Iraq to
collect a group of poems that would become the corpus for this paper. My intention was
that the collection would be a good representation of Northern Kurdish poetry in Iraq
over the past sixty years. Ascertaining which poets were revered proved to be difficult, as
much of the population is illiterate or only nominally literate. Many literates lack
exposure to poets, either past or modern. However, I was able to meet with poets and
people who read poetry and obtained a body of translated poems, more than I could use
in this thesis. In the end, I made the decisions on which poems to include in the corpus
based on my evaluation of their overall quality, as well as their ability to represent a
range of poetic devices. All of the poems with English translations are provided in
Appendix A. All titles of poems come from their original publications or the copies given
to me directly by the authors.
The corpus consists of poets from three periods of Northern Kurdish poetry.
Representing Neo-classical poetry is Ahmed Nalbend (1891-1963), Cegerxwîn 58 (1903-
1984), and Badirxan Sindî (b. 1943). Representing the New Period is Badirxan Sindî and
Mu’eyed Teyb (b. 1957). The Modern Period (the poetry of most present day poets) is
represented by Mihsin Quçan (b. 1954), Şaban Silêman, Mesud Xalaf, Hizirvan, Deyka
Dalyayê and Hisin Silêvanî.
The corpus is also representative of a number of subdialects of Badinan region.
Nalbend was from the town of Barmanê, near Amedî. Quçan and Dalyayê are also from
58 Cegerxwîn is the poet’s pen name. His real name was Sheikhmous Hasan.
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