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- Country of residence: Palestine
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Samīħ al-Qāsim (1939 - August 19, 2014) was a Palestinian Druze Israeli poet, born in Transjordan, whose Arabic poetry is well known throughout the Arab world. His poetry is influenced by two primary periods of his life: before and after the Six-Day War. He joined the Communist Rakah political party in 1967, later activated in the Front for Democracy and Equality "Hadash". Al-Qasim has published several volumes and collections of poetry.
Al-Qasim was born in 1939 in the city of Zarqa in northern Emirate of Transjordan (now Jordan) while his father served in the Arab Legion of king Abdullah. He came from a Druze family from the town of Rameh in the Upper Galilee. He attended primary school there and then later graduated from secondary school in Nazareth. His family did not flee Rameh during the Palestinian exodus of 1948 (Nakba). In his book About Principles and Art, he explains:
While I was still at primary school the Palestinian tragedy occurred. I regard that date as the date of my birth, because the first images I can remember are of the 1948 events. My thoughts and images spring from the number 48'. Al-Qasim has contributed to the journals of Al-Ittihad, Al-Jadid, Index and others. He claims, that the pan-Arab ideology of Nasserism impressed him during the nationalist post-1948 era. Most of his poetry relates to the change of life before and after the Nakba, the Palestinian and broader Arab struggle to free their lands from foreign influence, Arab nationalism, and various Arab tragedies. In 1968, he published his first collection of poetry, Waiting for the Thunderbird. Al-Qasim wrote about these subjects while they were at the climax of their popularity among the Arab population in the later half of the 20th century. When asked by his Iraqi friend, poet Buland al-Haidari if he had visited Baghdad, he replied by saying he did not have to, since he views any Arab city as equal to his own Arab residence.
As of 1984, al-Qasim had written twenty-four volumes of nationalist poetry and published six collections of poems. His poems in general are relatively short, some being no more than just two verses.[4] Some of his famous poems include:
Slit Lips
Sons of War
Confession at Midday
Travel Tickets
Bats
Abandoning
The Story of a City
Conversation between Ear of Corn and Jerusalem Rose Thorn
How I became an Article
Story of the Unknown Man
End of a Discussion with a Jailer
The Will of a Man Dying in Exile
The Boring Orbit
The Clock on the Wall
Al-Qasim died on August 19, 2014, after a long battle with cancer. His funeral was held on, August 21, 2014, in Rameh.
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