Qassim Haddad

Between 2008 and 2015, Haddad received four scholarships for literary residencies in Germany. He completed the book طرفة بن الوردة (“The Rose of Tarafa”) during a 2008-2011 residency at the German Commission for Cultural Exchange in Berlin, followed by a 2012 Jean-Jacques Rousseau Fellowship from the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, a 2013 grant from the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Cologne, and a 2014 PEN Centre Germany in Munich. These allowed him to complete the following freelance projects, besides the aforementioned طرفة بن الوردة:

Haddad was awarded the “Arab Creativity Award” from the Lebanese Cultural Forum in Paris in 2000 and won the Al Owais Award in the poetry category in the 2000-2001 cycle. In 2017, he won the Aboul-Qacem Echebbi Award on its 2017 return to Tunisia after a hiatus since the Tunisian Revolution of 2011, along with the third Poet Mohammed Al-Thubaiti Prize in Saudi Arabia. In 2020, he was regaled at the Fifth Cairo International Forum for Arab Poetry.

Haddad's website جهة الشعر (“Jehat”) was launched in 1996 and posted Modern Standard Arabic poetry in its original form and translated into seven languages. In March 2018, however, new additions to the site were suspended due to lack of funds.

The third stage builds on his interest in aesthetics, including linguistic experimentation and the use of sound, symbols, and metaphor. His 1983 collection شظايا (“Splinters”) is a long poem applying shock and tension to the lyric approach of the era.

The second phase includes the collections قلب الحب (“Love’s Heart”) and القيامة (“Judgment Day”), both published in 1980. These more experimentally introspective works transform the subjective ego into an objective collective one and include richer, more transcendent language. Many collections through 1991 continued to build on this theme.

He is married and has three children, including his son the noted composer Mohammed Haddad (born 1975) and his daughters Mehyar and noted photographer Tufool. He has three granddaughters (Amina, Ramz, and Lamar).

Three phases can be distinguished in Haddad's poetic career. The first consists of his first three collections: البشارة (“Portents,” 1970), خروج رأس الحسين من المدن الخائنة (“The Exodus of Ras Al-Husayn from the Treacherous Cities,” 1972), and الدم الثاني (“The Second Blood,” 1975). In these three collections, his rhetoric and lyricism rejects the status quo and calls for revolution. The allusions are often to mythic figures such as Sisyphus, Scheherezade, Penelope, and Antarah ibn Shaddad, as well as to modern colonial resistance symbols such as Che Guevara, Vietnam, and Palestine.

He worked in the public library from 1968 to 1975, but was in and out of political incarceration for five years’ total between 1973 and 1980. In 1980, he joined the Culture and Arts Department at the Ministry of Information. His column, "وقت للكتابة" (“Time to Write”), has been syndicated weekly in a number of Arab publications since the early 1980s as well. His poems have been extensively translated, and he retired from the Ministry at the end of 1997.

Qassim Haddad (born 1948) is a Bahraini poet, particularly notable within the Arab world for his free verse poetry. His poems have been translated in several languages including German, English and French.

Qassim Haddad was born in Bahrain in 1948 and did not complete his secondary education, having educated himself over the years. Haddad first rose to prominence with his poetry that contained revolutionary and political themes such as freedom. He published his first poetic collection titled Good Omen in 1970 and has since published more than 16 books, including Majnun Laila, a book of poetry and paintings, and a book of poetry in collaboration with Saudi photographer Saleh al-Azzaz. In 2007, Haddad created controversy when he reworked the Arabic classic Layla and Majnun, with Marcel Khalife which fundamentalists believed undermined Islamic morals.