Choman Hardi
Choman Hardi (born 1974) is a contemporary Kurdish poet, translator and painter.
Background
She was born in Sulaimaniya in Iraqi Kurdistan, the daughter of poet Ahmad Hardi. In 1975 her family fled to Iran after the Algiers Accord but returned to Iraq after a general amnesty in 1979. They were forced to move again in 1988 during the Anfal campaign. She arrived in United Kingdom in 1993 as a refugee and studied psychology and philosophy at Oxford and University College London. She did her PhD at University of Kent focusing on the effects of forced migration on the lives of Kurdish women from Iraq and Iran. She has published three volumes of poetry in Kurdish. Her only collection of English poems titled Life for Us was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2004. Her articles have appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation[1][2]
Career
She has been a former chairperson of Exiled Writers Ink! and has organized creative writing workshops for the British Council in UK, Belgium, Czech Republic and India. She was a resident poet for 10 months at the Moniack Mhor or Scotland's National Writing Centre in 2004. She is a recipient of a Jerwood/Arvon Young Poet's Apprenticeship. In June 2007, an exhibition of her paintings at the Hawth Arts Centre in Sussex County. In 2014, Dr. Hardi was appointed at the American University of Iraq - Sulaimani as a lecturer in the department of English and Journalism.
Books
- — (1996), Return with no memory (in Kurdish), Denmark, ISBN 87-984331-6-4
- — (1998), Rûnakîy sêberekan : şîʻir (Light of the Shadows), Kitêbî Rabûn, 14. (in Kurdish), Rabûn, ISBN 9789197335447
- — (2000), Light Mirrors and Shadows: Poems, OCLC 427634821
- — (2004), Life for Us, Bloodaxe, ISBN 9781852246440
- — (2011), Gendered Experiences of Genocide: Anfal Survivors in Kurdistan-Iraq, Voices in development management., Farnham, Surrey, ISBN 075469433X
- — (2015), Considering the Women, Bloodaxe, ISBN 9781780372785
References
- ↑ Untitled essay, Modern Poetry in Translation, pp. 156–157, No.17, 2001.
- ↑ "Kurdish Women Refugees: Obstacles and opportunities", in Forced Migration and Mental Health, pp149–168, 2005.
External links
- Official website
- Profile at the Poetry Archive with poems written and audio
- 5 Book Reviews by Anna Battista, Erasing Clouds, Issue 28, November 2004.
- Choman Hardi reading her poetry - a British Library recording, (audio) 27 May 2008.
- Life for Us by Choman Hardi. At Bloodaxe Books
- Choman Hardi, Exiled Writers.
- The British Council, 2004. Out of ourselves
- An Interview with Choman Hardi, Textualities, June 2005.
- Kurdish Art comes to Southern England, By Rob Cole.