Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Abdullah Issa
is a poet, academic, diplomat, political analyst, film director and producer,
winner of many prestigious Arab and international awards. He is considered one
of the most prominent Arab modernist poets since the mid-1980s. He has also
been called by many titles, including the poet of Palestine in exile.
biography
Abdullah Issa
is a creative Palestinian poet, distinguished by presenting the Palestinian
cause in poetry and narration as an aesthetic cause based on peace, coexistence
and love in the face of the occupation’s legitimacy that is rooted in erasure
and erasure. In addition, every poetic achievement he writes is unlike any
other of his completed collections.
The poet
Abdullah Issa was born on January 15, 1964 in Babila camp, near the Yarmouk
camp near Damascus, in Syria, in a family that sought refuge in Syria after the
conquest of Palestine during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
The narrators
state that his father, Mahmoud Issa, took refuge as a boy from the village of
Akrad al-Ghanama in the Safad district (historians report the presence of the
Kurds in Palestine that Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi kept them there after his
victory over the Crusaders to defend it) in the Safad district, and his mother
Fawzia al-Hasan from al-Manshiya on the outskirts of Acre. Following the death
of his father in 1987, the poet was forced to support a family consisting of
his mother, his 13 siblings, and his paternal grandmother, Saada al-Nimr. He
worked in the Palestinian cultural press in Syria, such as Al-Hurriya and
Al-Ghad Al-Jadeed magazine, between 1984 and 1989, the year he left Syria for
the Soviet Union. Although the family house kept only two books: the Holy
Qur’an and Mahmoud Darwish’s Diwan, it preserved several parts of the Holy
Qur’an and dozens of classical Arabic poetry. The dynasty’s conversations about
Palestine and the pain of the Nakba, and the rise of the Palestinian revolution
from the Palestinian pain, in addition to the presence of the symbolic figure
of Yasser Arafat in his life, shaped the poet’s awareness, and stimulated his
creative faculties to write new, distinct and different poetry from the
beginning. The poet gifted the late leader Arafat several creative texts.
In 1983, he
won the Arab Poetry Prize, which was held in Syria, and stimulated critics to
turn to his talent, read his creations and write about them, and during this
period he won many awards and appreciation.
In 1990 he
joined the Maxim Gorky Institute of Literature in Moscow, and from 1993 until
2004 he worked as a preparer for cultural programs on Radio Voice of Russia,
where he presented the most important Arab and Russian creations, and
translated the most important Russian poets into Arabic, and Arabs into
Russian. On wide fame. Author of programs on Russian and Arab culture.
In 1994 he was
the editor of the literary magazine “The Poets”. In 1995 he graduated from the
Maxim Gorky Literature Institute with a class of "Poetry". In 2001,
he defended his thesis at the Institute of Asian and African Countries on
“Means of Artistic Expression of New Arab Poetry: The Second Half of the
Twentieth Century.” In 2002 he became an academic at the «Eurasia» Academy of
UNESCO. Since 1998 he has held the position of Secretary General of the
International Arab Union of Journalists and Writers.
Since 2003, he
has managed several news agencies and television stations and a political
analyst in the Russian and Arab worlds.
But the
request of the Russian Foreign Ministry to negotiate with the hostage-takers at
the Beslan School in North Ossetia in 2004, and his agreement to do so, where
he witnessed the human pain again, which he witnessed in the massacres
committed against the Palestinians inside the homeland and the diaspora, left a
deep impact, so he produced and directed several films. Documentaries, as well
as poetry and narration.
Between 2005
and 2009, he worked as a producer on a series of documentaries for Al-Jazeera
TV Network (Their Archives, Our History, and An Appointment with Exile). He
also held, between 2007 and 2009, the position of Office Director of the Arab
News Agency.
In 2010 he
also produced “Death Test”, which reveals the process of testing the Israeli
nuclear bomb in South Africa in the early eighties of the last century, and
starred the Hollywood star and world champion in fist fighting Aleg Taktarov,
as well as the movie “Tehran 34”, which monitors the assassination attempt on
Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin by Hitler, and it starred well-known star
Valery Nikolayev. The two films were shown on several Russian and foreign
stations.
He also
produced and directed a series of films “Muslims Russia is proud of” in 2012,
the most important of which are: “The Road to Mecca”, “The Time Ripper”, “Star
Hour”, and “From the Nile to the Neva”. These films were presented in special
shows, and were shown in Many Arab and foreign festivals and stations.
In 2013, he
directed and produced the movie “We Love Life” with executive producer Ramil
Khairullin and cameraman Alexander Koshelev, which was shown in Moscow and
other capitals and cities, and in many international festivals. Mahmoud Darwish
and Naji Al-Ali, and talk about the dream of the Palestinian child in Gaza
under siege.
And with the
outbreak of the transformations that ravaged the Arab world, showing a state of
regression to the past, the emergence of chaos at its head, and the spread of
infighting on sectarian, sectarian, and other grounds, especially in 2013, he
was busy presenting the “Abdullah Issa Café” program live, where he met with
symbols of Arab cultural action and presented their visions. In the face of the
killing and destruction that pervaded several Arab countries. At the end of
2015, he joined the Palestinian diplomatic corps to be appointed as an official
spokesperson at the Embassy of the State of Palestine to the Russian
Federation. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas awarded the Palestinian poet
Abdullah Issa the Medal of Culture, Science and Arts - the level of innovation
“in appreciation of his poetic creations and his active presence in the Arab
cultural scene and his sure role in documenting Palestinian and Russian
relations, and his service to our Palestinian cause intellectually and
behavior» in the same year.
The World
Literature Fund also chose him as the Person of the Year 2015 in “Dialogue of
Civilizations and Bringing Cultures Closer” in May of the same year.
He was also
chosen in June 2017 as a guest in the book “The Year of the Poet”, which was
published in English in the United States by the Inner Child Publishing House,
whose executive director is the poet William Peters. In 2017, the Russian poet
Vladimir Boyarinov, First Vice-President of the International Assembly of
Writers’ Unions and President of the Russian Writers’ Union in Moscow, awarded
him the “Creative Chekhov Medal” for his role in enriching the movement of
culture and human creativity in general, as he indicated that “the importance
of the poet Abdullah Issa lies In his ability to take possession of the corner
of the word and give it a special ability to create an aesthetic world that
triumphs for life with love over death, and presents his cause through his
poetic, narrative, cinematic and diplomatic tools, as an authentic part of the
human cause in general, and as an examination of the extent of humanity’s
ability to achieve human justice in the face of the enemies of life and beauty
in our planet ground.” He obtained full membership in the Russian Writers Union
in 2017, to be the first Arab and foreigner to obtain it without having Russian
citizenship.
Achievements and Awards
The most important awards and achievements
2017 - June was chosen as a guest, among three poets around the world alongside Taiwanese Tzimin Tsai and Polish Lisa Siget, in the book “The Year of the Poet” published in English in the United States by Inner Child Publishing, whose executive director is poet William Peters.
2015 - The World Literature Fund chose him as the Person of the Year in “Dialogue of Civilizations and Bringing Cultures Closer”.
2015 - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas awarded him the Medal of Culture, Science and Arts - level of innovation.
1999-2002 - President of the International Union of Arab Writers and Journalists in Russia.
2001 - Member of the “Asia and Africa” Academy of UNESCO.
1996-2001 - Assistant Professor at Moscow University - Institute of Asian and African Literatures.
1995 - "Master of Arts" - Maxim Gorky Creativity Institute of the International Assembly of Writers' Unions.
1985 - Member of the Palestinian Writers and Journalists Union.
1985 - First Prize in the Arab Poetry Festival.
his poems
1987 - The dead prepare the funeral
1995 - Hazee (in Russian)
1996 - Alaa
1998 - First Sky Ink
2000 - Resurrection of the Walls
2013 - Shepherds Heaven, Shepherds Oleander
2014 - My Brothers, Dad, Not the Wolf
2017 - Fawzia Al-Hassan's Ten Commandments
Written by
1987 - A Poetic Vision. Study
2018 - Anthology of Russian Poetry. translation
2019 - Word and Spirit in Contemporary Poetics. study
source
- Years in active
: From
To