The Nabati Poetry of the United Arab Emirates

Nabati poetry is the traditional poetry of the Arab tribes of Arabia and neighbouring areas. Though composed in an artistic variant of ordinary Bedouin speech, historically it is the descendant of the pre-Islamic Classical Arabic poetry of antiquity, and its modern exponents still compose in the traditional genres of boasting, praise, satire, elegy, advice and guidance, love and lyric poetry. Nowadays, there is also a thriving tradition of poetic comment on contemporary social and political issues. This book gives an account of the tradition as practiced in the United Arab Emirates, exemplified by English verse translations of fifty-three poems by twenty-five different poets covering the last half century. The original Arabic poems are also included, with brief notes on their language, rhyme, and scansion. Thee book is accompanied by a CD containing recordings of twenty-two of the poems in the original Arabic.