>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. >> Diana Ingram: All right, so we're going to get started. Welcome everyone, I'm Diana Ingram I'm the Executive Director here at Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital. And I just have to ask -- well first of all, it's so lovely to see such a mixture of ages in folks, but is there anyone who has never been in this building before would you raise your hand. Excellent, welcome. >> That's great. >> Diana Ingram: Come back. Take a look at the program highlights that are on your chair, there's all kinds of fabulous things happening. But the neatest thing that's happened aside from this event tonight next Wednesday, the beautiful artwork that you see that was just put up we're having our opening reception with the artist. So please come back 6 p.m. next Wednesday. We have sparking water and wine and mixed nuts and it's a fun time for all. Tonight take a moment to turn off your mobile devices if you would please. And it is a great pleasure to welcome you to the 11th edition of life of a poet, it's amazing. Featuring always effervescent fabulous poets, but tonight Dunya Mikhail, the enigmatic, effervescent poet in residence and Ron Charles, of course, who is, you know, such a fabulous raconteur. If you've missed any of the previous life of a poets conversations they are up on our YouTube channel and also on the Library of Congress' website I believe. So it's a really fascinating archive. The series is made possible through the generous support of National Capital Bank. So if you live on Capitol Hill and don't bank there consider banking there, we like them. And the format. Directly following the conversation Dunya will sign books here. Yes, it's a slightly new format because some people didn't get their books signed and they didn't get to buy them, so here. Then everyone is invited to adjourn to Bayou Bakery, which is right, you know, right there. And there's a 15% discount, which you may not even need to use tonight, so save the 15% discount and come back for another evening at Bayou Bakery. Okay, please join me in welcoming Robert Casper, head of the Library of Congress' Poetry and Literature Center. He is also the program's director for the Poetry Society of America. Casper served as membership director for the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses and I guess 11 years ago now founded Jubilat, one-of-a-kind. It publishes the best of contemporary poetry anywhere. So let me turn this over to Rob Casper, thank you. [ Applause ] >> Robert Casper: Thanks Diana, thanks to all of you for coming out on a suddenly cold evening, oh it's okay. Bayou Bakery the gumbo's really good, it's worth going to get it afterwards and they actually have good coffee drinks too. We're thrilled to be back here. Thanks to Miriam Brownlow who dreamed this series up a few years ago and here we are at number 11. Of course, we want to thank the Washington Post for its support and I think our Washington Post book world editor, Ron Charles. To think that once upon a time Ron was only focusing on fiction at our city's great paper. What he's done over the course of 10 programs I believe will continue to entertain and educate poetry lovers for the years and decades to come. And it's worth checking out the webcast of the videos on our website and in the insider's YouTube channel, they're just remarkable. Before I talk about tonight's featured poet let me say a little bit about the Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress. We are home to the poet Laureate consultant in poetry, our current poet laureate is Juan Felipe Herrera, who is terrific and fun and wild and sweet and worth seeing when he comes into town next week and in April. We also host a range of programs such as this one, most of them are just down the street at the Library. If you want to find out more about our programs you can visit our website www.LOC.gov/poetry. We've also left out some surveys that should've been on your chairs. We want to find out what you think about this program, get your comments so that we can improve upon it, though it's really sort of impossible to improve on what Ron Charles is about to do and I mean that completely sincerely. >> Ron Charles: Let's not waste too much time filling that out. >> Robert Casper: I had a fun 10 minutes before the event basically saying I love Ron Charles so much I don't even know what to do with myself. So anyway, please give us your feedback, let us know what you think that would be great. And now I'm excited to introduce Dunya Mikhail to begin our 2016 season. Mikhail was born in Iraq in 1965 and was forced to flee in the wake of the first Gulf War. She's the author of six books in Arabic and one Italian. Her three books in English all published by New Directions publishers and I believe all three are for sale outside include The War Works Hard, Shortlisted for the Griffin Prize and named one of 25 books to remember from 2005 by the New York Public Library, Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea, which won the 2010 Arab-American book award and most recently the Iraqi Nights. Mikhail's honors also include the UN human rights award for freedom of writing and a Kresge Artist Fellowship. The cofounder of the Mesopotamian form for art and culture she's an Arabic special lecturer at Oakland University in Michigan. And for her actually even today it's somewhat warm coming from Michigan. Mikhail is here to participate in the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here DC 2016 Book Arts and Culture Festival led by Split This Rock. For the last two months exhibits, programs and events have commemorated the 2007 bombing of Baghdad's historic bookselling street. A big thanks to Split This Rock Executive Director Sarah Browning who is here, Sarah. [ Applause ] Sarah is making this happen. To find out more about the events in the festival there are a number of events coming up in the weeks to come, including events with our future speaker. You can check out this website I'm just going to give it to you, it's www.amsschdc2016.org or you can go to Split This Rock website and click on the link and you should be able to check it out. But I strongly encourage you do it. For this series for life of a poet tonight offers us an opportunity to expand Ron's ongoing engagement with poets and poetry beyond our country's borders. This seems apt for our capital city considering the debates among thinkers of all types, positions and perspectives within the district on all things international. I look forward to the next hour and the ways it will surely show me why Dunya Mikhail's poems need to be part of that debate. Please join me in welcoming Ron Charles and Dunya Mikhail. [ Applause ] >> Ron Charles: It's such a delight to have you here. >> Dunya Mikhail: My pleasure. >> Ron Charles: And to have read your poems and to have been so moved. While preparing for this interview I ran across an exasperated poem in which you write, please don't ask me America I don't remember on which street or with whom or under which star. Don't ask me I don't remember. I'm going to ask you though. I'm going to ask you anyway. You're our 11th poet, you're our first foreign-born poet, of course you're our first Iraqi poet and you're the first poet whose life story is so death-defying. No it is, I mean there is some really exciting moments in your biography and some of course, some terrible moments. Tell us why you had to leave Iraq. >> Dunya Mikhail: Okay, well first about you said first, first, first. You know, I'm from Mesopotamia, I mean originally Iraq. And that place everything that happened in the civilian the culture happened first in history. But I left Iraq, I had to leave Iraq -- well I was going to leave Iraq earlier than I had to leave when I graduated from secondary school. I was, you know, very good at math, I mean I don't know how serious was going to be, but my father was serious about it more than me. And he thought I was genius in math and I have to, you know, to show the world that make inventions in math and he wanted to send me to America to, you know, to study math more. And that time was during the Iraq Iran war that when it was the beginning of the war when I graduated from the high school. And, you know, I was so excited not about -- to be honest not about math, but excited to go to America, be independent and imagining everything that I can do whatever. Like read any book, even bad books and a lot of things, maybe be in a small apartment versus our house was full of guests like around-the-clock people I don't know my mother was so social she's not like, so always. They were lovely, but I wanted that something different and. >> Ron Charles: You were 18, 19? >> Dunya Mikhail: Eighteen I think. What age we graduate from 15, 16, well [inaudible], yeah 18 maybe. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. >> Dunya Mikhail: Yeah, I'm 18 you're right. So and anyways, so I was talking about it 12 hours a day and the other 12 hours just imagining, you know, what's going to happen. But then when we went to the passport office to get permission because we had to get permission to leave the country all came to nothing because they said the law doesn't allow women to travel to study at their expenses during the time of war. So of course my father saw my disappointment, so he said you know what this should be temporary because the war will not last forever and this law will change. Why don't you study English as you prepare for America, so that's how I went to the English literature? And then in the College, University of Baghdad and with literature and friends to be honest I forgot about America, about math and about all that I was busy and, you know, very engaged with these things. But it happened after graduation and by the way, I graduated from the University of Baghdad and the law didn't change. The war was still over and the law didn't change but. What happened is that in the 95 Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea in Arabic part one came out and. >> Ron Charles: This is your? >> Dunya Mikhail: Yeah. >> Ron Charles: Your first book? >> Dunya Mikhail: In Iraq it was not first, no before it was number -- this book was number three, number three in Iraq. So there were two books before. But this when this came out we have censorship department, we have to have permission before we publish, it's an actual building with actual employees. So that their job title is to watch, you know, what. >> Ron Charles: To protect the populous. >> Dunya Mikhail: Yes, yes. >> Ron Charles: From bad ideas. >> Dunya Mikhail: And yes to protect you from bad ideas you're right, that's perfect. And then there was a passage that was highlighted by the censor that should be taken away. And I said you know what it's a very small text it doesn't -- I can't afford taking anything away, it's a small one. He said you know what, so he wanted to be on the safe side I don't blame him, he said I will just put the note and it's up to you. But then I didn't take anything away. And then there was somebody came to my office in the Baghdad Observer and he pretended he's journalist he wants to interview me, but I know my colleagues the journalists he was not journalist. >> Ron Charles: But this time you were a working journalist. >> Dunya Mikhail: In the Baghdad Observer yes. And then he was really investigating, he was asking all these questions that I were -- so I was suspicious about. Because he was also focusing on this passage that I didn't take away. And I was like pretending he's real journalist saying, you know, it's not the task of the writer to explain it's the task of the reader. >> Ron Charles: So you were both pretending. >> Dunya Mikhail: Yes. >> Ron Charles: Both knew what was happening. >> Dunya Mikhail: Yes. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Dunya Mikhail: And then I had some links, friends who had links in the, you know, that somebody told me a friend, her son-in-law knew that there's a report out and she said, you know, as soon as possible leave the country because the report [inaudible] higher rank it's not good. So but it was very complicated the paperwork to leave and I don't know should I continue then what happened or maybe because, you know, because how I left the poetry really saved my life. And when I say that really is not metaphorical it's real, that's how I left true poetry but. >> Ron Charles: You had to change your occupation from journalist to poet. >> Dunya Mikhail: Exactly. >> Ron Charles: Then you were free to go. >> Dunya Mikhail: Yes, because well. >> Ron Charles: Please leave. >> Dunya Mikhail: Yes, as a poet you don't need a leave of absence from anywhere. >> Ron Charles: Nobody cares. >> Dunya Mikhail: Yeah, but leave of absence in Iraq that time was very complicated. As a journalist you need to take papers from the Union of Journalists and that is very complicated, you know, it takes forever and so really poetry saved my life. And it's written in my passport I keep it, it's expired but the profession is poet. >> Ron Charles: And Saddam saved you from math. >> Dunya Mikhail: I don't think of that. I love math. >> Ron Charles: You still love math? >> Dunya Mikhail: I still love -- no I stopped it I mean, but I have that like you know how you have first love you think of it, you think about it sometimes. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Dunya Mikhail: Like that like you forgot about it, but it's first love. >> Ron Charles: I was a math major in college, but now I look back I can't even -- I don't even know what the questions are, I can't read it at all. You received a message that let you know it was time to get out fast and that message was the flowers are withering. Weirdly poetic and tragic. >> Dunya Mikhail: Yes, this message was from my friend fiction writer I don't know if I'm allowed [inaudible]. We agreed that okay, because I left but I had in mind maybe I come back if things calm down. So this was our code that if she tells me the flower, you know, are blooming and this means okay, come back. >> Robert Casper: Yes. >> Dunya Mikhail: So that was our code. >> Ron Charles: The flowers are blooming. >> Dunya Mikhail: Because she can't. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Dunya Mikhail: Talk directly in the letter, so that was her message that don't come back. She didn't want me back. >> Ron Charles: This is a weird question and none of us is in favor of censorship of course, but is there a way in which censorship puts pressure on language that makes it more metaphorical, more allegorical, more creative? >> Dunya Mikhail: Yes, I mean that exactly what was happening with me and with other writers in Iraq that we were using this metaphors sometimes as shields. I wanted to be understood, I'm the kind of person I like to be understood actually by readers and by everybody, but I didn't want to be understood by the censors. So that's using those metaphors because the true readers they understand you those metaphors, but he censors maybe not. Well a funny thing happened with that metaphor I tell you maybe if the time allows it with the minister of information and culture with this. But another funny thing a friend from back home while I'm in here in America, you know, I kept on contact and he said to me Dunya, you were writing better before. So because he loved those metaphors I was using they were maybe good for my poetry. >> Ron Charles: Right, that's what I was wondering. >> Dunya Mikhail: Yes. >> Ron Charles: [Inaudible] want that but in a way. >> Dunya Mikhail: Yeah, it looks like it served our poetry. But a lot of you know surrealists things happened. >> Ron Charles: Right, I want to look at one of those passages. You note -- let's see here in this diary about a shell, a seashell. I wonder if you'd read this is a very long work without breaks and I'm just asking her to read a section of it here from there to there. It's when you talk about poetry as a shell. >> Dunya Mikhail: This is a [inaudible] by the way, but it's okay that it's compliment everybody says it's poetry yeah. On the seashore was an enormous shell that contained the protoplasm of poetry. Someone brought it to me and linked the essence of my life with its invisible threads. I felt like a kite looking at the world from above. Like any child little things make me rise or fall that shell of poetry drew me from or into everything and let me do nothing but play with it and glorify it. I have tried many times to rid myself of its magnetic power and is deadly effect on me. >> Ron Charles: That's lovely and troubling. What about poetry is like a shell and why would you want to get rid of it? >> Dunya Mikhail: It's annoying, it's -- well, you know, really it's so obsessed. Even one time I said to someone, you know, so how you are, I mean when you are a poet not even I mean as a writer it's easier to say I'm a writer. When you say I am a poet you hesitate I don't know why. And like people how you deal with it first with yourself like 24 hours a day you are obsessed with something what is this thing I am obsessed with this, why am I obsessed with tis all the time and why is this directing my life, everything is dictated by poetry. And on the other hand like I found myself one time saying to someone yes, I write poetry, but all my other habits are good. Like then I thought about it I said, so it's like as if you defend yourself. And as a matter of fact, I even remember how when I was teenager I mean I was in my room and I was lucky I had the room of my own, I mean Virginia Woolf was right I mean it was very important. And my mother we always had a lot of guests and I heard her one time saying to the guest she is busy writing her feelings. And, you know, how embarrassing that is to a teenager. But you know why she said that she said because in Arabic the word [foreign language] feeling is similar to share poetry and Arabic is not her first language [inaudible] is her first, Arabic is her second. And she made her own plural of the two words to say -- she said it's like she's busy writing feelings. But you know now I think of it I appreciate that she considered writing feelings important enough to excuse you from coming and be with the guests or from social daily, you know. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Dunya Mikhail: And things like that. >> Ron Charles: That's lovely. You were once asked if you thought poetry was therapeutic and you said poetry is not medicine it's x-ray, what do you mean by that. >> Dunya Mikhail: Yes, I still believe it's not healing, it's not -- it's an x-ray that helps you see the wound and understand it. And it's like or if I say something similar it's like a key where you can open a door behind which later you can see all the wound that happened then. I mean it's not, I mean although it is not healing and it's actually used less, but it's very effective at the same time it's strange. So I'm trying to like it's really -- it's very effective like and delicate like the trace of the butterfly on the things. But to say it can stand in front and face of catastrophe I'm not sure if it can do that, but we do resort to poetry and we feel together -- we feel alone and we feel together at the same time when we see all this violence that's happening in the world. Not that it's going to, you know, to heal I still believe it's not the function of poetry. But as if there's a possibility of survival, but it's not final, it's not final to say I survived it doesn't mean you are saved, it doesn't mean. >> Ron Charles: Right, right. In Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea this remarkable autobiographical book, I think it's a poem. It about 120 pages, it's in two parts, one written in Iraq and one written in America, it's sprawling and it has this elastic form, it's got dreams and narratives and myths and reporting and epigraphs and lyrics, it's just really strange. I mean I haven't read anything else like it except maybe Leaves of a Grass. What was your model for this, what were you doing? You say that you didn't even think of it as a poem which just strikes me as remarkable. I mean clearly it is a poem it's written in highly metaphoric language, it's broken into beautiful lines, it uses repetition, it uses all the elements of poetry. Why would you think it's not a poem? >> Dunya Mikhail: You know, it had the symptoms of poetry, such as the symptoms are similar to like symptoms of falling in live like you feel this excitement and you are. But it's happened I wrote this after the second, is it second war Gulf War we call it or it's called many names. It's called the 91 war, here it was called Desert Storm and in Iraq they called it the mother of all battles. It had nicknames, you know, so it is and that war was very intense and I very clearly remember it very well. I mean because simply we had a room in the house called the war room, the room of war. >> Ron Charles: Was it a safety room for you? >> Dunya Mikhail: My mother prepared that room she called it the war room and we were not allowed to leave the room during that war of 91. And she designed it in a special way like she taped the windows so that the windows break we don't get hurt so badly and she taped the whole of the door so that the chemical weapons don't go through. >> Ron Charles: That's intense. >> Dunya Mikhail: And we were suffocating because we were trying to -- my brothers and I we were taking turns to lit that candle and it was not because no oxygen there. And even going to bathroom was a problem because she was afraid -- she wanted us to die or live altogether. So she was not wanting anybody going even like to bathroom was like quick, quick. So anyways, it was something. But what was I saying anyway? >> Ron Charles: The form of this book. >> Dunya Mikhail: Okay, so that's when I mean I had such an experience in that war and right after I didn't write it during the war, but when it stopped I stated writing this as I wanted some response to the war it caused so much mess. >> Ron Charles: Is it like something you had read? >> Dunya Mikhail: It was so much mess that I felt if I give it a form this mess in my head, I wanted to give it some form. And the title of it actually I hate the saying that they say you hit a bird with two tones, I hate to hit the birds [inaudible]. But I had two goals in the title. One is as it is understood like the wave outside the sea, the sea is the society, the environment that you want to be out of. But the second meaning sea in Arabic [foreign language] also has another meaning which means the pattern, the metric pattern because we have classic Arabic poetry, it's traditional poetry. It has 16 patterns and each one is called [foreign language] sea and mine was modern so I wanted outside these patterns also. So it had some. >> Ron Charles: What we would call free verse does that relate in any way? >> Dunya Mikhail: No, free verse after the traditional [inaudible] we call it there's a free verse movement started in Iraq actually in the 1940's by Iraqi poets to Iraqi poets female and male [inaudible] and Badr Shakir al Sayyab they started the free verse movement and separate to other countries. But that also had some rules, it still has rhymes, but it was more free with the lines because the tradition was so, so strict with the [inaudible] what you called in this middle and all that and it was just 16 founded by [inaudible] century. And my friends other modern writers, poets and I who were serious about not only poetry, but modern poetry. Why should we all follow a man's rules, you know, but that was not welcome this type of modern writing was not so welcome in the media yet. Anyways, so that was kind of a response to the sea is that it's outside what is familiar. >> Ron Charles: Right. >> Dunya Mikhail: A written style of writing and also outside the sea, the society, the environment and that. >> Ron Charles: Would you read a passage here it's about the bombing it starts here and it runs onto here. >> Dunya Mikhail: Okay. The radio says that light planes are dropping cluster bombs on shelters and bridges. I never heard of such a phrase except as a cluster of grapes. Oh life a suspension bridge between two wars. Why don't the flowers of others like to bloom save in the remains of our ashes. The letters do not arrive, the telephone does not ring, nothing rings but me. What time is it now, is the war over, will they return, was there enough room in the sky for the birds when the planes raised our dreams, I'm sorry when the planes raided our dreams and turned everything to flour. It was a night of extremes some of the residents could not sleep while others left forever. And when the spots of slide multiplied in the darkness, flying things lost their minds. No one could tell if the birds had changed into planes or if the planes had changed into flaming birds. Everything was shaking, the city and the people inside the city, the hearts inside the people and the people inside the hearts. The planes circled over the capital, bumping its residence into the villages towards an unknown fate and toward the questions of children that grown-ups do not know the answers to. The planes flew over at the [inaudible] filling the eyes of [inaudible] with dismay as his horses left the city. The planes flew over the shelters, over the debris that collected in the shelters, over the children who slept under the debris, over the body parts that had been children, over the ash the body parts became over the walls sprinkled with ash, over the drops of blood on the walls. In war no one is rescued from death. The [inaudible] die physically and the killers die morally. >> Ron Charles: So beautiful and so horrific, such a weird tension between what's being described in the language and the rhythms of those phrases. What's it like for you to hear this in English when you wrote in a different language? >> Dunya Mikhail: Yes, it's kind of different when I did in Arabic, you know, of course I did it better excuse my bad reading. >> Ron Charles: No, no. >> Dunya Mikhail: My third language. >> Ron Charles: You read lovely. >> Dunya Mikhail: Yeah, it's really my third language, but I'm improving in it. And, you know, English helped me make more sensitive towards my original language. I kind of made me really think more carefully about Arabic because, you know, how your first language is automatic. But then because of translation you go back and forth and you even improve your first language as a result of the second. >> Ron Charles: War poetry has such a long history like from Homer and beyond I suppose all the way up to our great Iraq poets, our great Iraq war poets in America like thinking of Brian Turner and Kevin Powers, both that you know from Iraq. But your position to the war is different you were never a soldier is your primary difference, as well as other differences. You write on the first morning of the new year all of us will look up at the same sun. You're not writing about being in battle, which gives the poems in your descriptions of war such a different tenor. I'd wonder if you'd read this poem called Iraqis and Other Monsters. >> Dunya Mikhail: Yeah and this is really about stereotyping the Iraqis, but I found here in America you know that Americans also are stereotyped by our people. Yeah, so this is we have these ethic groups and all the conflicts between. Anyways, let me [inaudible]. Iraqis and Other Monsters. They are terrifying, their heads are dark and tremulous, no tremeliou -- how do you say it tremelious [phonetic]? >> Ron Charles: Tremulous. >> Dunya Mikhail: Tremulous right. They are terrifying, their heads are dark and tremulous. They roam the desert in the form of bulls and lions with swords gleaming in their eyes. They rub their mustaches when they make promises or threats or when they flirt. Smoke pours out of their massive noses and rises to the sky. They shake the earth with such strength it wakes the dead. They live in darkness without water or electricity. Dust is their food, clay their bread, they no neither sleep nor rest. The war visits them every day with new baskets of bones. They have strange customs, the Sunnis say the Shias all have tails, the Shias carry keys to have in their pockets in case of sudden death. The Kurds take to the mountains when they fight and when they dance the [inaudible]. The Chaldeans consult the stars in all decisions. The Syrians put feathers on their heads to prove they have vanquished the eagle. The Armenians throw themselves in the river whenever they are annoyed. The [inaudible] celebrate their festivals by staying home for three full days. The [inaudible] honor the peacock and consecrate letters. The Turkmens are always waiting for the Sultan to return. When the sun sets and the guns fall silent these Iraqis and other monsters take out their [inaudible] and make music for the missing together until morning. And I want to say something though about -- this was written before all this happening, well this is a pre-ISIS era you know. And I mean to be honest this would be written different maybe I don't know after because I am so occupied, my mind is so occupied with what's happening in Iraq, especially in the north, especially to the [inaudible] minority and also to Christians these days that I'm afraid I have some in [inaudible] now because of this. Because I've been involved with it day and night and I've been writing my new work on this thing. >> Ron Charles: But this poem does it stand outside all these prejudices, all these stereotypes it makes them all seem a little ridiculous right? Makes us realize that we can transcend these ridiculous images of one another for peace if we would just be a little more morally imaginative. >> Dunya Mikhail: Yes, but at the end they are all missing something and that, I mean they are monsters but in the poem they look monsters, but they're really from inside it's fragility and I don't know. >> Ron Charles: Another one of your poems captures the city just before it ends. It's a really startling, frightening poem. >> Dunya Mikhail: I wonder which one. >> Ron Charles: It's called Five Minutes. >> Dunya Mikhail: Oh, oh that one, that's a very old one yes. >> Ron Charles: What like 2,000 years old? >> Dunya Mikhail: Twentieth century. I am a poet, when they say poet from the 20th century I say whoa, whoa I'm a dinosaur or something still living. >> Ron Charles: Yeah, yeah. >> Dunya Mikhail: Yes and this was imagining the last five minutes in the world like last five minutes. In five minutes the world will end, the owner of the shop next-door has just put up the closed sign and gone away as if he knows there's no time left for work. There are other stores open, their owners are still absorbed in work, but the world will end in a group of lively boys, rushes by the street, following them a dog leading an old man. The traffic light is red, the bus driver makes a slight adjustment to the rearview mirror. There are still several [inaudible] that move across the mirror. The driver pulls away now, the traffic light is green. It will keep changing even after five minutes. A young man checks his watch and waits for the next bus. In the public park a couple walks past the statues and smiles under the sun. The statutes are carefree, they stare firmly at nothing. A tourist wanders full of curiosity and takes pictures of what will soon be absent. There in the white hospital women, their new babies too late the babies might leave the world without names. In one of the words they will be left forever in test tubes while the wiggling lab mouse performing a test will be free at last from the big eye that always watches. The test is not difficult, but time will run out before the answer. And it no longer matters whether or not you knew, smell the roses and keep going. The rose always knows that the world will end in five minutes. The blue shirt in the shop window seems beautiful on the mannequin. A young woman points it out to her friend and they had toward the revolving door to be swallowed by the towering building. On the wall glossy advertisements huge sale, new remedy for wrinkles, cigarettes don't harm your health, but the world will end. In his world room inside the wall palace, inside the wall city the tyrant is chewing on an apple and watching himself on television. Who would believe that in five minutes he will relinquish his throne? Another defendant receives a life sentence, his attorney wants an appeal but the world will. Passengers push through the exit door, others come in through the entrance door. A woman sets down her suitcase and waves her hand it's not me. A man waves to her from behind the airport glass it's not you. I don't know if they met or at the time that university student prefers to travel by train, it doesn't make much difference now. He has agreed with a friend to go on a picnic, I don't know if the picnic ended before the world or the world before the picnic. As for me I'm writing a letter, I don't think it will be finished within five minutes. >> Ron Charles: It's so haunting the way you identify all these ordinary little tales of people's lives and hovering over that is the fact that everything will be destroyed. It really captures the tragedy of war. We sort of wince as we read that poem knowing what's coming, you know, having lived through it. >> Dunya Mikhail: But this was published in Iraq and, you know, like what I meant by censorship like that stands of tyrant and all that they question you about like what do you mean by that. And it's happened one time a friend published that's why they said your poetry is subversive they called it there. And I had a friend, a very nice friend who was also poet and he was editor in one of the Iraqi newspaper I don't remember which one we had three. And that poem pronoun which is in the end of the world works hard in 91 he published it and he told me something. He said you know what I [inaudible] if someone asks you who is the general in the poem say that's Schwarzkopf. So this was our ways of survival like in Iraq, these ways, tricks. >> Ron Charles: Nice, very nice. >> Dunya Mikhail: So if they say who's the tyrant I say like someone. >> Ron Charles: It's good that tyrants aren't very smart. A very brief poem called The Plane. The Plane arriving from Baghdad carries, it rises above the moon reflected on the Tigris. Above clouds piled like corpses and an ancient harp and the beating breasts and the ones who were kidnapped. It rises above the destruction that grows with the children and the long lines of the passport office and Pandora's open box. The plane and its exhausted passengers will land 6,000 miles away from an amputated finger lying in the sand. >> Dunya Mikhail: I love when you read it's so good. >> Ron Charles: No, I should make you read it. >> Dunya Mikhail: Oh my God. >> Ron Charles: Just such -- it's such a devastating poem the way it takes this world, you know, world shaping action, the war, the planes, all this political disaster and then it brings us right down, right down onto the ground to one little moment that says everything right, which is that somebody died. Somebody precious is now blown to bits. And of course it's startling too and it's an amputated finger lying in the sand, but even though it is. But's a devastating little poem that captures the whole war. Bravo. There's another one I want you to read called The Prisoner remember that? [Inaudible] you haven't read these as recently as I have. Again, it's one of these little moments. As we experience the war, you know, in the newspaper or on TV and it just seem so abstract and so large and so loud and so, you kind, kind of videogamesque [phonetic] for Americans. And then you bring us moments like this. >> Dunya Mikhail: I thought you going to read it, but so. The President. She doesn't understand what it means to be guilty. She waits at the prison entrance until she seems him to say take care of yourself as she always used to remind him when he went off to school, when he left for work, when he returned while on vacation. She doesn't understand what they are saying now at the back of the podium in their official uniforms. The report that he should be kept there with [inaudible] strangers it never occurred to her as she sang lullabies on his bed in those distant days someday he would end up in this cold place without windows or moons. She doesn't understand, the prisoner's mother doesn't understand why she should leave him just the visit is over. >> Ron Charles: That's what war is for actual people is losing their family members, being separated, being bewildered by it. I suppose all these are based on actual friends or experiences you've heard about or knew about? >> Dunya Mikhail: Yes, we always heard of -- always somebody disappeared, I mean when I was a journalist in Iraq. I mean there was in the corner of every newspaper in Iraq there is a saying, the same saying, it says write feely whether the government likes it or not. But nobody believed it we knew that was like not even a joke it was a trap and we were because we were seeing our colleagues disappear, every day somebody disappearing whether in prison or gone or like in best case scenario too what they call exile. >> Ron Charles: Like you. >> Dunya Mikhail: I don't know what exile is. >> Ron Charles: You. >> Dunya Mikhail: Yes. >> Ron Charles: Yeah, that does seem. >> Dunya Mikhail: That's the best case. >> Ron Charles: Preferable yes. In the diary. >> Dunya Mikhail: You know, I wanted to say how lucky I was that I had a suitcase, but these days because, you know, I can't get rid of these images of those going on. Now the people are leaving with no suitcases, with nothing just leaving. >> Ron Charles: The story in today's paper was so disturbing. Just a little moment from the diary. >> Dunya Mikhail: I wander among the ruins like a word in the dictionary roaming in search of its meanings in a language without verbs. I'm a verb of the past trying vainly to change to the present tense. They said behind every window no matter how small a horizon can be seen. Ever since I heard that I have been drawing windows that open up, do nothing. This was all written like a long time ago I don't even remember it. Really seriously I'm so surprised. >> Ron Charles: Still incredibly powerful. >> Dunya Mikhail: Thank you for bringing of this. >> Ron Charles: To wander among the ruins like a word in a dictionary. We're going to take a little break. There is a weird sardonic humor about the war in some of your poems that I think comes from having survived them. A kind of cosmic absurdity. One called Silent Movie. >> Dunya Mikhail: Oh. What I was, what was I thinking. There in the sky's playground the gods toss us around like purses and cast us down from above without speaking a word. They watch us, but don't hear us. We are a silent movie with a bad director now wonder the gods get bored or switch us off and go to sleep or forget about us as we bend like a question mark on an empty screen or sneeze as we pray for return of the gods even without any words. You know, I would change a lot in this if I rewrite it. It's interesting that you ask me the poems I never read in public. >> Ron Charles: This reminds me of Gloucester and King Lear talking about the gods killing us for their sport. I'm sure half the people can recite the lines. Then there's another one here with a title called The War Works Hard. It begins how magnificent the war is, how eager and efficient early in the morning it wakes up the sirens and dispatched ambulances to various places, swings corpses through the air, it rolls stretchers to the wounded, summons rain from the eyes of mothers and digs into the earth, dislodges many things. Summer life wasn't glistening, others are pale and still throbbing. It produces the most questions in the minds of children. The poem goes on like this with this really strange kind of humor. What are you reaching for there, how magnificent the war is? >> Dunya Mikhail: I don't know it's how -- why I mean it's, I know it's person fight. I wanted to be treated like something like somebody like doing their job. And it was, you know, in my mind I think I'm not sure this comes to my mind always as if like what I saw the scenes from war as if they are scenes from thousands of films that don't relate each other and they're seen from here and there and they come -- it's strange how they come to your mind together. But they are very vivid in my mind that it's strange because my memory is not so good, I forget a lot, I find myself it's embarrassing how much I forget. But how vivid are these scenes in my mind from that time. And so I get always question is this about a certain war and it's not about a certain war it's about war itself. >> Ron Charles: It's always working hard. >> Dunya Mikhail: Yes. >> Ron Charles: Yes, too hard yeah. It ends with these lines. The war works with unparalleled diligence, yet no one gives it a word of praise. Let's talk about the immigrants, the immigrant story which is your story. >> Dunya Mikhail: Yes. >> Ron Charles: You write as I left I knew I was forgetting something, it bothered me to leave it behind, but I was determined not to look back like Orpheus leaving the underworld. But of course you do look back all the time. >> Dunya Mikhail: Yes, I mean this method of Orpheus fascinated me always how, you know, in case it's [inaudible] but just in brief I tell you sorry if you know it and I'm repeating it to you. But Orpheus lost his beloved wife Eurydice and then he was promised that he would have her back with one condition if he doesn't look back when she's after him from underworld to the upper world. But he does look back and he loses her by that look. But I always think, I mean I even have in the Iraqi [inaudible] poem called The Gaze of Orpheus because I wanted always like I want to get rid of it, I talked about it, about the gaze of Orpheus. What if he didn't look back, but you know kind of I understand him. >> Ron Charles: Of course. >> Dunya Mikhail: To look back, I mean how can you not look back I mean. >> Ron Charles: But she pays the price not him, I mean he gets to leave. >> Dunya Mikhail: Right, but I think that looking back because maybe he liked her so much that he was making sure she's behind him. >> Ron Charles: Right definitely. >> Dunya Mikhail: Or I mean the same way like you can't not look back to let's say your country, your original country. I know I mean that I said like when you leave you have -- I mean a child me something one time, a neighbor child. She said you know why we have our eyes in front of us because we want to look forward not backward. I said wow, I love that. >> Ron Charles: Yeah, that's good. You write why am I blamed for departing from mirrors that reflected what I didn't like to see. You remember that phrase, why am I blamed for departing from mirrors that are reflected what I didn't like see it. Who do you think, do you feel a sense of blame for leaving, even abandoning your country is that sort of a nagging sense of guilt? >> Dunya Mikhail: Yes, I mean on an official and less official level, on official level there was a list where I was -- the list as being traitor because I left without leave of absence I just like escaped and everything, suddenly [inaudible]. >> Ron Charles: You're officially guilty. >> Dunya Mikhail: Officially, but also not even casually what you call it or inside me, I mean I don't know to leave suddenly without saying goodbye to anybody, your friends and. >> Ron Charles: It sounds horrible. >> Dunya Mikhail: And even pictures and ID cards and those were left and [inaudible]. But you know a neighbor of us was so sincere he went and he kept some of these ID cards and. >> Ron Charles: Nice [inaudible]. >> Dunya Mikhail: Some pictures that was nice of him. >> Ron Charles: You got it eventually? >> Dunya Mikhail: Not everything, but he kept -- he told us when people were there to like buy things or get things and all he worried about is the ID cards he took them and kept them for later. >> Ron Charles: This is a very painful section of the diary, which you apologize and apologize. >> Dunya Mikhail: Also that's an answer for your question. I am sorry I left you among the ruins. I'm sorry I left without saying goodbye. I apologize to my new home for carrying the ruins with me. I apologize for not being able to be in two places at once. I apologize to the war for avoiding its nightmares by turning my face to the wall. I apologize to the sirens for preferring the sound of music and the rhythm of water fountains. I apologize for running to lose weight instead of running to escape explosions. I have left my friends too busy for their sufferings. Life continues behind their backs. I'm sorry away from you I look at the blue spaces between skyscrapers and the America of lottery tickets, credit cards and fast food. Leave you and love you. >> Ron Charles: You write in another poem. We crossed borders lightly like clouds, nothing carries us. But as we move on we carry rain and an accent and a memory of another place. The pain of leaving people behind just seems to me incalculable I can't imagine what it's like. As you say you had to leave very quickly there were no going away parties, no winding down, no cleaning out your desk. >> Dunya Mikhail: Not only that even my brother had his wedding coming in two weeks after that and I wanted to wait two weeks and he said no, you know, just go if you can because we can send you the video later. [ Laughter ] >> Ron Charles: In one of your poems you write there is a knock at the door how disappointing it is the New Year and not you. Let's talk about that leaving in a hurry this is called I Was in a Hurry. >> Dunya Mikhail: You know this is the first poem I wrote here in America. >> Ron Charles: Oh my gosh. >> Dunya Mikhail: After not right away, in the beginning I didn't write I was trying to find a space called a place or something. But when I returned to writing like this was my returning to writing poetry. This was this first poem I wrote here and I really could connect more better to the new place I felt more when I was able to write. >> Ron Charles: That helped. >> Dunya Mikhail: It felt more at home. >> Ron Charles: It was therapeutic. >> Dunya Mikhail: No. [ Laughter ] Almost got me. >> Ron Charles: Yeah. >> Dunya Mikhail: I Was in a Hurry. Yesterday lost a country. I was in a hurry and didn't notice when it fell from me like a broken branch from a forgetful tree. Please if anyone passes by and stumbles across it perhaps in a suitcase open to the sky or engraved on Iraq like a gaping wound or wrapped in the blankets of immigrants or canceled like a losing lottery ticket or helplessly forgotten in purgatory or rushing forward without a goal like the questions of children or rising from the smoke of war, eroding in a helmet on the sand or stolen in Alibaba's jar or disguised in the uniform of a policeman who stirred up the prisoners and fled. Or squatting in the mind of a woman who tries to smile or scatter like the dreams of new immigrants. If anyone stumbles across it return it to me please. Please return it to me it's my country I was in a hurry when I lost it yesterday. >> Ron Charles: I love the way that poem rolls and seems to pick up momentum as it goes. Did you write it in English? The poem, did you write that poem in English? >> Dunya Mikhail: Now. >> Ron Charles: And someone else translated it for you or? >> Dunya Mikhail: You mean did I write? >> Ron Charles: Originally you. >> Dunya Mikhail: Oh I wrote it in Arabic I always write in Arabic first. >> Ron Charles: You always -- even now. >> Dunya Mikhail: Oh yeah I always write in Arabic first. You know, now I have the habit of going on the page first from right to left and left to right like this and this, you know, why it drives me crazy that's one of the reasons. >> Ron Charles: Much more efficient. You could write in English clearly. >> Dunya Mikhail: I think so. >> Ron Charles: How much time do we have? >> Dunya Mikhail: Some sentences sometimes in English first due to their cultural connotations being here sometimes. >> Ron Charles: Your attitude about America is complex. >> Dunya Mikhail: My attitude. >> Ron Charles: Your write America is but a baby of a country, she doesn't really cause problems, she always thinks it's easier to replace problems than to fix them. Your washer is broken the repairman says, it's easier to replace it than fix it. Your country is broken the politician says, it's easier to replace it than fix it. It's funny, but it's awful. Other times your attitude is even more playful in a poem called Choices you begin paper or plastic, I am not sure how to respond. I wish I'd had such a choice in pressing matters long ago when I was in the country that cared less about our choices or what kind of bag we used. A reminder to us in America that we sometimes don't worry about the most important things. If you'd read part of a poem called The Foreigner, the second part. >> Dunya Mikhail: Foreigner I have that [inaudible]. The second part. >> Ron Charles: Yes please. >> Dunya Mikhail: You know by the way this in Arabic The Foreigner it was hard to translate, it's the foreigner and it's feminine and [inaudible] Arabic every word is either masculine or feminine by there's a feminine ending. I mean [inaudible] like for example the room is feminine, like the moon is masculine and the sun is feminine and so on. So and this was the title like foreigner and it's feminine ending or has feminine ending. But I don't know why we couldn't do that, I mean we didn't do it in English that way. But anyways. >> Ron Charles: You would want something like the foreign woman is that what you're trying to suggest a femininity about it? Is that what you're saying? >> Dunya Mikhail: It was [foreign language] which is the foreigner or stranger and his feminine ending as if it's something attached to it, it's a double thing. It's the female foreigner, is the female foreigner other than the masculine specifically. But the way I say it in Arabic as if this feminine female is attached, she's not the second, she's the second because feminine ending. Like I didn't say just [foreign language] which is we have that [foreign language]. But I said the masculine foreigner and his feminine ending which means the female, but I said it in a complicated way. I like to make things complicated, but sometimes I'm just like a child. I don't know a thing about my role in this new play and all my lines will mean nothing to the audience since they understand neither my Aramaic nor my Arabic. So I'll imitate the gestures of whoever I encounter on the road as I guess their facial expressions under the foreign sky. I won't tremble more than a baby leaving the test tube against his will and I won't cry despite all these bodies who greet me kindly and carelessly. I have already seen them in a dream like me they rush to prove they exist. They have fingerprints and memories and wings and like me they sometimes gets stricken with boredom and the flu. They too depart for new places though as tourists and not the immigrants. It's not enough after all to complain of the climate or of my role in this new play. >> Ron Charles: That is you writing about the way you feel in this new place. >> Dunya Mikhail: I think you're right I have attitude but why. >> Ron Charles: Like. >> Dunya Mikhail: No, no you meant a different way I know that. >> Ron Charles: Like you're in this new place it's like a play and you don't entirely know the lines, but you have a role you have to play. >> Dunya Mikhail: Yes, I mean this after all isn't this true in the world we have a role. >> Ron Charles: Yes. >> Dunya Mikhail: In the world, I mean I even have a poem called a Second Life where we all need a second chance because in the beginning I thought we Iraqis need a second life it's not fair we lived all that way and we're not given a second chance. But then I wrote the poem after I thought no, maybe everybody needs a second life. So it's like yes, I think we need that second life. >> Ron Charles: Yeah, we all feel like we're in a play we don't know the lines. In one of your poems you write outside of Iraq I often dream of returning home. It's still true? >> Dunya Mikhail: Continue what's after, but then I get afraid that I get caught again. >> Ron Charles: Yes, of course. Do you still dream of returning home? >> Dunya Mikhail: You know, it comes honestly -- two things come always in my dream my father, my dead father always comes in my dream and I always dream that I am back. But to be honest always not happy dream when I'm like something happens that I say oh, but my daughter is not here or something like that. >> Ron Charles: You could go back. >> Dunya Mikhail: I think yes, I can now is different reasons, but I think I can go back. I am planning to be honest to go back north of Iraq specifically to visit the dead, not to visit the living because. >> Ron Charles Your own family? >> Dunya Mikhail: I don't know if I should oh my God, a lot of terrible things, you know, happening. But my grandmother who was very, I don't know maybe we don't have time and we have a minute, two how many? Two minutes or that we have? And my grandmother who was this figure who I started my first literature experience with her she was the one who was telling me stories over the roof of our house and all that. And back in June 2014, I watching a video of a group, a terrorist group ISIS and they were destroying these statutes, these symbols. Not only that they were destroying graves because there were some symbols on them they didn't understand like Aramaic or Hebrew writings and or crosses or things like that. And so that's why I thought of the grave of my grandmother which was in the village north in [inaudible] that's the village we went to when it was war. And so I wrote a poem it was published it's new it's not in these books it's published in poetry My Grandmother's Grave, it's about that. And so that's one reason and there are mass graveyards now in Sinjar, Mount Sinjar mass graveyards of these -- most of them [inaudible] people. And these mass graveyards are families, are men and there are women who were not suitable as sex slaves and children who refused to be separated from them. So I want to go and visit the dead this time not the living, that's what I want to do, to go. >> Ron Charles: You have to make that trip. It will be a very difficult trip on many levels. >> Dunya Mikhail: I think, I mean I'm serious I planned it and everything and end of May, beginning of June and I have a manuscript related so it would be good to finish this and have myself to see things and interview people. So I mean I don't promise, but I'm doing my best to do it. >> Ron Charles: Your daughter's name is Larisa. >> Dunya Mikhail: Yes. >> Ron Charles: And she's mentioned in this poem, this is the final lines of the diary. >> Dunya Mikhail: It's a great relief to have my daughter far away from danger, from clouds like corpses, from kidnappers' masks, from long lines at passport offices, from amputated fingers in the sand. Larisa scatters the old pictures and mixes them with the new ones. She mixes pictures of snowballs in Michigan with pictures of a round city with two rivers, palm trees, poetry, wars, a thousand and one nights. Inside that city was our home. Inside the home was our garden not separated from the neighbors even by a wall and inside that garden was a raspy flower I will never smell again. >> Ron Charles: Thank you so much this was lovely. >> Dunya Mikhail: Thank you, thank you for having me, I really appreciate this. Thanks. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at LOC.gov.