About Mahmoud Darwish
Mahmoud Darwich (March 13, 1941 - August 9, 2008 in Houston, Texas), is one of the leading figures of Palestinian poetry. He published more than twenty volumes of poetry, seven books in prose and was an editor of several publications and anthologies. He is internationally recognized for his poetry which focuses on his nostalgia for the lost homeland. His works have earned him multiple awards and he is published in at least twenty-two languages. After more than thirty years of living in exile, he was able to return to Palestine under certain conditions, where he settled in Ramallah.Darwich's work, essentially poetic, is a true defense and illustration of a land, a people, a culture at the same time as a bold enterprise of literary genesis. It is haunted from start to finish by a single idea, a single reference, a single body: Palestine. The loneliness and disarray of exile expressed rub shoulders with noble and courageous acceptance where deep despair becomes a generator of creation, carrying an intense poetic charge. Darwich's work was described by Yannis Ritsos as "epic lyrical". Darwish's prose work includes a narrative, A Memory for Oblivion, which chronicles a day in the life of one man, the poet himself, during the 1982 siege of Beirut.
He died on August 9, 2008 in the United States at a hospital in Houston. He is buried in a plot of land near the Palace of Culture in Ramallah.
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