Khalid Albudoor
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Khalid Albudoor is an Arabic poet born in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on April 7, 1961. Albudoor, who was raised in Dubai, is considered to be one of the most important names in the modern poetry movement of the UAE. [1]
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[edit] Education and early work
Studied mass communication at United Arab Emirates University and then attended Ohio University in the United States where he obtained an MA in script writing. He began publishing his poetry in 1980 and has been quite active in his community, helping to establish the Emirati Writers’ Union and participating in several poetry festivals in the UAE and abroad. [2]
[edit] Later work and achievements
Worked as a Radio and Television programme presenter and has also produced several documentary films and programmes.
Won the Al Khal Prize for Poetry in Lebanon in 1991.
Has published three poetry collections and his fourth is due late 2008.[3]
[edit] Poetry collections
Albudoor has published the following collections[4]:
- Night (Layl), published in 1992.
- Jabr Wa Ghazal, published in 1999.
- Winter (Shtaa), published in 2002.
[edit] Recognition
Dr. Omnia Amin, a teacher of English literature in Zayed University in Dubai, talks about Albudoor's work[5]:
Khalid Albudoor is a poet of a different calibre as his poetry has an intrinsic flavor resonant with the myriad possibilities offered by life. His poetry is quick to penetrate to the reader as he does not force judgments and prejudices upon places and situations. Rather, he celebrates life in a wholesome and an all-embracing ritual of his own. Life for him is to be celebrated with all the five senses and is to be embraced with the soul of a connoisseur of life’s multi-flavored dimensions. Albudoor celebrates the pleasure and pain of existence, beauty and ugliness, the dark and light aspects of the self and others, without a sense of bitterness. Everything for him is good, to be sampled and enjoyed for its own sake. There is no feeling of sorrow or loss except in the thing’s ability to offer the poet a new door for exploring life in all its different forms. This makes his experience closer to that of the all-endorsing mystic or the wisdom of a Buddhist seeker. His language is simple but rich with layers of the sensual and the spiritual. Each and every reader will find a level that can satisfy his/her own experience. Albudoor’s poetry gives a communal feeling that everything shared becomes part of the richness of everyone, part of the collective experience of all times.
[edit] Selected poems
The following poems are taken from Albudoor's collection, entitled “Winter,” published in 2002 by the Emirates Writers’ Union in the UAE [6]. (Translated from Arabic by Omnia Amin)
[edit] Possibilities
I sleep
Certain there is another life
Behind every night
But I do not know
From which direction
The wind will blow
I carefully weave my dreams
Like someone weaving possibilities
Possibilities
That largely resemble
The morning’s fog.
[edit] Stones
When you went out
After a hot bath
With steam rising from you
You turned your sight
And gazed at the window
As you stumbled in your steps
To prepare the incense.
I know that you are thinking of the stones
I collected from the cold river
In Tennessee
Which you have to leave behind
When you depart.
[edit] The Trees
I look behind
To make sure
If there is someone …
I look behind
And see the trees.
I return to my loneliness
To think of the garden.
Why do we return
To fill our days with yearning
And drive our feelings towards their deceptions?
In the evening’s dust
We always
Return
To where we began
Like two papers
In the middle of a book
Or like two words
That were not written
Why do we return to a time before utterance
To throw ourselves together
Without a language
Or without words.
I see you
My balcony
And I see that she
Has reached my
Green plant,
Let me then tie a thread to the curtain
So she would follow it.
I want to cry a little
For the heart is heavier than a mountain
I want to wet this night a little
To kiss you a little in your sleep
Until you sleep
And I want to cry
Because
I could not remember
How .. when
Where
The last time
It rained.
My longing increases
Whenever birds stand in my balcony
And you,
Whenever the years fall off
Our window,
You seem sweet
Like a summer shore,
While searching for ourselves
We met
When they were switching the lamps off
And the flowers were thrown
After the sleepless threw them away
From the tables,
Everyone seemed
A stranger, as if we do not know them
And the night ended its final chapter.
We were laughing
I saw your iris
Get wet
With ecstasy.
When we left the place
The branches of love
Were entwined over the trees.
[edit] The Pendulum
I lie down
As my eyes resist in darkness
The last white drops of awakeness
I see you drink
I could almost hear the water
Mix in your mouth
And your heart beats bitterly
Like a tired watch
Without regularity.
Let us contemplate together
This empty night
When we return
At two in the morning
And cannot make love
The clothes
The sheets
The overturned books
Your body, the glass of water
The pillow, my head
My soul
In which the departure bell
Rings tomorrow
In the early morning.
Let us contemplate together
This night that is left for us
The house
That will be deserted by its people
The edges of the silver moon
Are sharp
Resembling
The edges of our days.
You do not answer
I see you search for words
And your eyes water
I know that you are
Wading in memories
In the heart of the night
Where desire is awake,
Although our minute is dark
And the stars have closed their eyelids
Look
It is five in the morning
The bell of departure rings
Like the pendulum of a watch
And we have to
Get up.
[edit] The Birds
They will all arrive this time
The shiver
The shaking of the soul
And the swirl of memories.
They will arrive
While the dawn’s fog crowns the trees
And slowly pours
Over the heart.
I got out of my sleep
But
For years
Wishes have no morning In the hall of my house
And the birds did not pass
To spread their greetings
Or to eat the seeds
From the palm of my hand.
[edit] The Toasts of Names
When the night’s roaring
pulled us with its waves
and we listened to fear,
in the place
where we exchanged toasts of names
for the first time
Did you hear how the springs pour
And how the nights that shine like silver
Pull us towards the hissing of the dawn …
I helped you climb the fence
Then we stole the fruit of the Cyprus garden
No one saw us
We collected the fallen laughter
As we shook the apple tree
We listened to the roaring of the night there
Love was
Our small basket
And we had not yet become lovers.
