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Adnan al-Sayegh

Adnan al-Sayegh was born in al-Kufa, Iraq in 1955 and is one of the most original voices of his generation of poets. His poetry denounces the devastation of wars and the horrors of dictatorship. Adnan has published eleven collections of poetry, including the 550-page Uruk’s Anthem (Beirut 1996). He left his homeland in 1993, lived in Amman, and Beirut then took refuge in Sweden in 1996. Since 2004, he has been living in exile in London. He has received several international awards; among them, the Hellman-Hammet International Poetry Award (New York 1996), the Rotterdam International Poetry Award (1997) and the Swedish Writers Association Award (2005), and has been invited to read his poems at many festivals across the world. His latest work in English and Arabic is Pages from the Biography of an Exile, published by Arc, 2016. http://adnanalsayegh.com/eng/