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and free of qafîa. Because I couldn’t write at that time, because the subject was so
passionate, so emotional, and I was really astonished when I had that experience.
Everything was off. Everything was gone. That was when all the Kurdish fighters had to
withdraw to Iran and put down their weapons, and there was no revolution. This was in
1975 when the Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein―they signed what they called the
Algerian Treaty. So when I heard it, I was shocked and I couldn’t believe that everything
was over, because Kurdish people and the fighters had been fighting for years―from ‘61
to ’75. It was for 14 years. And I started to write my poem, and I felt, really, I can’t use
the qafîa, I can’t cater to the vowels and consonants. So I put my poem about that subject
in a free style, and that was my first time when I wrote in this style. And later I started to
write some other poems in this way.
way?
EM: Did you say you were the first to do this? Did other Kurdish poets write this
BS: Yes. There were some others before me who wrote Kurdish poems in
Dohuk―not in Sulemaniya―but in Dohuk. They wrote some poems without qafîa, but
there was measurement and ‘way.’ But I wrote at that time without qafîa and without
‘way.’ Pure, free poem. So, that is what Mu’eyed Teyb said on the back of my book.
EM: Can you say something about the performance style of poets? Kurdish poets
perform their poems when they present them. They don’t just speak them; they have a
way of saying them. Where did this way come from? Is it Kurdish? Do other cultures
perform this way or is this a Kurdish way?
BS: No, I can’t say it is a Kurdish way. It is something in the Middle East. The
Persian people―they read in the same way. The Arab people read in the same way. It is a
common way.
EM: It’s very old, I guess.
BS: Yes.