Fadhil Assultani works as the literary editor of the Arabic daily al-Sharq al-Awsat. He began writing poetry in the 1960s and his publications include a book of poetry called Burning in Water. He was born in a small town near the city of Hilla, south of Bagdhad and, after studying at the University of Bagdhad, became a journalist. He has taught in Iraq, Morocco and Algeria, and now lives in London.

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Two long-exiled Iraqi poets, after reading their poetry at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts in the wake of war and a complex liberation in their homeland, discuss with the audience the legacy of a long dictatorship on their own and their compatriots’ spiritual condition.

A few weeks after the war in Iraq, three Iraqi poets read to an audience at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Uncertainty and excitement mingled, as the writers spoke of a time that seemed to be both receding and emerging into view. New freedom was ahead, bringing unheard stories and fresh voices. Identities were shifting just as attention fell upon them. Fadhil Assultani was one of the poets present. These translations of his poems come from Iraqi Poetry Today, the Spring 2003 issue of Modern Poetry in Translation. Poetry by Salah Niazi and Hashem Shafiq will follow soon on openDemocracy, along with the discussion from that evening, which ranged over many of the political, personal and artistic questions these exiled Iraqi writers now face.