Magin_Edward-thesis

3. Interviews
During the time of my research in Northern Iraq, I was fortunate to have the
opportunity to conduct brief interviews with three poets: Badirxan Sindî, Mihsin Quçan
and Mu’eyed Teyb. 21 I also interviewed Reşîd Findî, one of the chief editors of Ahmed
Nalbend’s entire collection of poems. Below, I present highlights from these interviews.
My interview with Badirxan Sindî was done in English. A translator was used for
each of the other interviews. In a number of instances, the translator speaks in third
person where the interviewee had spoken in first person. In the discussion that follows, I
have changed these instances to first person for easier readability. The full transcriptions
of the English provided by the translators are available in Appendix B. Regarding the
subject of verse form and syllable count in Northern Kurdish poetry, I refer the reader to
§ 5.3.1 and § 5.3.2, where it is covered in detail.
3.1 On the development of Northern Kurdish poetry
Northern Kurdish poetry is divided into four periods. The Classical period is the
earliest period, consisting of poetry written before the time of Ahmed Nalbend (1891-
1963), the earliest poet represented in the corpus. The poetry from this period may be
summarized as having rhyme―particularly end rhyme―meter and classical forms. The
poets of this era used Arabic, Farsi and Turkish in addition to Kurdish, and some poets
even wrote entire poems in these languages. Nalbend is considered to be a representative
example of the Neo-classical period. While these poets still utilized the poetic devices of
21 Each interviewee gave permission for full use of the interview at the beginning of the interview session.
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