Journey Enriches Poems of Basim Furat, Winner of the Helmy Salem Prize for Poetry

Honours that Furat has obtained embody the Ibn Battuta Prize for Travel Literature, which he has gained twice, in 2013 and 2014, and the Sultan Qaboos Prize for Culture, Arts and Literature, which he gained within the journey literature class in 2019. He has additionally gained a couple of award for poetry.

Awards Are Not a Mark of Distinction

Regardless of these honours, Furat doesn’t assume prizes are vital and doesn’t regard them as proof of literary distinction.

“They lose their significance when years cross with out crucial consideration to the laureate’s works,” he stated. “What’s the worth of an award if the winner’s aesthetic achievement doesn’t encourage critics to put in writing about it?”

Research, analysis, and articles on a author’s artistic output are what reinforce and preserve the awards’ relevance, he stated.

“Too many prizes and writings are a double-edged sword; their greatest use is to inspire the author to innovate, and to extend his duty in return for the reward bestowed on him,” he stated.

Furat’s works range between prose poetry, classical vertical poetry, and dactylic poetry. He started his poetic profession writing classical vertical and dactylic poems, which he says got here naturally due to a musical ear and due to his wealthy readings and early memorisation of previous Arabic poetry.

Furat additionally writes prosodic poems that mix two meters (buhur). “I wrote a protracted poem, narrating the biography of the late poet Hussein Mardan,” he recalled. “It mixed two meters: the ramal (trotting) and the hazaj (trilling).”

Locations as Sources of Poetic Astonishment

Furat has spent a few years in exile and has visited some 40 international locations around the globe. After overcoming the preliminary difficulties of reconciling with new places, he started to note a problematic facet of exile within the works of Iraqi poets who, like himself, have been pressured to go away their homeland.