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Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008)

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Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) occupies a place of honor as the Palestinian national poet. In 1964, at twenty-two years of age, he published his first collection of poems, Leaves of Olives. In 1965, he wrote his most famous poem, "Identity Card," which quickly became known and celebrated across the Arab world. An opponent of the Oslo Accords, Dariwsh published more than thirty collections of poems and prose during his lifetime, and received many prestigious awards.
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Images/Bio Sources: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mahmoud-Darwish https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mahmoud-darwish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Darwish https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/mahmoud-darwish https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sgymq https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mahmoud-darwish

Historical Note

Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was a poet regarded as the Palestinian national poet. Born in Al-Birwa, Mandatory Palestine, his grandfather taught him to read. During the Nakba, his family fled to Jezzin and then Damour in Lebanon. Because they missed the Israeli cencus, he and his family were deemed "present-absentees." A year later, his family secretly returned to Deir Al-Asad in Israel. He eventually moved to Haifa. In the 1960s, he joined the Community Party of Israel, and in 1970 moved to Russia to study at the University of Moscow for one year. Afterwards, he moved to Cairo and lived back and forth between Beirut and Paris until returning to Israel in 1996. He settled in Ramallah. His first collection of poems, Leaves of Olives, was published in 1964 at twenty-two years old. In 1965, he performed his most famous poem, "Identity Card," for the first time, and it spread throughout the Arab world within days. He went on to publish approximately thirty collection of poetry and prose, translated into more than twenty-two languages. He served as an editor for a PLO monthly journal and the director of its research center. He was appointed to the PLO executive committee in 1987, and resigned out of opposition to the Oslo Agreement in 1993. In 1997, he began serving as the editor-in-chief and founder of Al-Karmel. Honors and awards include the Ibn Sina Prize, the Lenin Peace Prize, the 1969 Lotus prize from the Union of Afro-Asian Writers, France's Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres medal in 1997, the Lannan Foundation's Prize for Cultural Freedom in 2001, the Moroccan Wissam of intellectual merit handed to him by King Mohammad VI of Morocco, and the USSR's Stalin Peace Prize. Darwish died following heart surgery in Houston, Texas in 2008. The Mahmoud Darwish Foundation was established the same year.