In this episode titled In Praise of Ishtar, we invite the renowned Iraqi-American poet Dunya Mikhail to read excerpts from the "Exaltation of Inana", a hymn dedicated to the great Mesopotamian goddess Inana/Ishtar and composed by the priestess Enheduanna, daughter of King Sargon and high-priestess to the moon god Nanna. The hymn is dated to the 3rd millennium BC and makes Enheduanna the first known poet in history. Dunya Mikhail shares her own poetry and in this exchange of rhymes, ancient and new, we create a bridge between the first poet and a modern one, two women with shared heritage as well as shared experiences such as loss of home and exile. We invite our listeners to revel in the poetry but to also explore, guided by the lyrical voice of Ms. Mikhail, themes of war and alienation or the female voice, all in praise of Ishtar.
Dunya Mikhail is an Iraqi-American poet and the author of several books of poetry, among them The Iraqi Nights, Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea, winner of the 2010 Arab American Book Award for Poetry, and The War Works Hard. She is also the author of a non-fiction book, The Beekeeper, an account of enslavement of women by ISIS. Her honors include a Guggenheim fellowship, the Kresge Artist Fellowship and the United Nations Human Rights Award for Freedom of Writing. She currently lives in Michigan, where she teaches Arabic at Oakland University.
Music:
Fatima Al Qadiri
Tracks:
Qasida - Sunset Fever 1
Ada and Souleiman
Body Double
Qasida - Sunset Fever 2
Yelwa Procession
Music written by Fatima Al Qadiri, taken from Atlantics OST. ℗ Copyright Control and Films Du Bal & © Milan Records, 2019.
Used with arrangement and permission from rights holders.
Fatima Al Qadiri is a Kuwaiti music producer and artist, currently residing in Los Angeles. She has released music as a solo artist on Hyperdub, Tri Angle, UNO NYC and Fade to Mind, and as a member of the group Future Brown on Warp. Al Qadiri is also a member of the Gulf-based collective GCC, whose work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, Fridericianum, Berlin Bienniale and Sharjah Art Foundation. Her writing has appeared in Bidoun, Frieze and DIS. In 2019 Al Qadiri scored the debut feature film by Mati Diop, 'Atlantics'. The film won the Grand Prix at Cannes Film Festival in 2019, while Al Qadiri also received a Cesar nomination for Best Original Score. In the first half of 2021, as well as working on further soundtrack work, Al Qadiri releases her third album on Hyperdub titled Medieval Femme which expands on ideas instilled from Atlantics to capture a dreamlike setting, shaded with colour and subtle friction. Inspired by the state of melancholic longing exemplified in the classical poems of Arab women, the theme of the album is the line between desire and desolation, questioning two seemingly opposite states and rejoicing in celestial sorrow.
The Persian poem featured in the soundscape of this episode, "Dar Peykarehyi az Sang" (In A Body of Stone) was written by Sheida Dayani in 2013 in Amed, also known as Diyarbakir, Turkey, inspired by the marble statue of 'Tigris and Euphrates' by the Turkish sculptor Babek Sobhi. The poem has been published in Tajrobeh, 9, no.142, Shahriva 1398, p.147.
Sheida Dayani is currently a Preceptor in Persian at Harvard University, where she teaches Persian language and literature and Iranian theatre. Starting September 2021, Sheida will be a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University. Her monograph, Making History with Theatre in Modern Iran: Juggling Revolutionaries by Edinburgh University Press is forthcoming in 2022. Sheida is a published poet and translator in Persian and English.
Audio post-production: Aref Heidar (Ceé)
Image: Disk of Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon of Kish. 2350-2300 BC. Calcite. Diameter 25cm, thickness 7cm. Ur, Iraq. Museum of the University of Pennsylvania, Courtesy of the Penn Museum, object no. B16665.
