كم وصل عدد اللاجئون في عالمنا اليوم؟

A collection of poetry by the famous and underrepresented Kurdish poet Farhad Birbal. Like his contemporary Abdullah Basho, Farhad Birbal’s poetry is a record of exile and displacement, longing and the feeling of alienation. His poetry alternates between nostalgia and loss, reflecting his role as a dissident and an oppressed prisoner. Birbal, the “cursed poet of Kurdistan,” is known as much for his controversial adventures as for his prolific literary output. Birbal was born in 1961, and it is said about him: “Perhaps the greatest innovator of Kurdish literature in the twentieth century, in poetry and prose” (Shuk, _Poetry Foundation_). Farhad Birbal (born 1961) is a prominent Kurdish writer, poet, painter, critic, singer, and researcher. He lived in Kurdistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Germany, Denmark, and France, where he obtained a doctorate in the history of contemporary Kurdish literature from the Sorbonne University. Birbal began publishing in 1979. He has written and translated more than seventy books, and is considered one of the most prominent and influential Kurdish voices. In 1994, he founded the Sharafkhan Dilsei Cultural Center in Hawler. In 2024, on the occasion of the publication of his works in English, Deep Vellum will publish his poetry collection “_Refugee No. 33333_” and his first short story collection “The Potato Eaters”_.