Ramin Jabbarli: As Attacks on Our Culture Continue, Resistance Literature Will Live On!

By Alirza Quluncu, Voice of America, January 29, 2013

Ramin Jabbarli

Young poet Ramin Jabbarli, who lives in exile in Turkey, gave an interview to Voice of America about the literature of longing and resistance in Azerbaijan. Many consider the world-renowned poet Mohammad Hossein Shahriar to be the pinnacle of Azerbaijan’s literature of longing. However, according to Mr. Jabbarli, both sides of the Araz River have produced artists who have represented this literature appropriately.

The poet from Southern Azerbaijan divides those who wrote poems of longing in the past into three groups. The first group consists of those who lived in Southern Azerbaijan and wrote about the longing for the North. Among them is Sigheh al-Islam of Tabriz, a cleric who was hanged by Russian troops during the Constitutional Revolution, and who is considered one of the pioneers of Azerbaijani literature of longing. The second group consists of poets who were forced to move to the North at different times, including after the fall of the Azerbaijan National Government in 1946. Ramin Jabbarli mentions poets from the third group as those from the Azerbaijan Republic, citing examples like Suleyman Rustam, a poet who was a product of the Soviet era.

Ramin Jabbarli asserts that in Iran, Azerbaijani resistance poetry has never been entirely separate from the theme of longing. He also includes the poems of some poets living in exile in other countries who write about their homeland in this category. As an example, he mentions Azerbaijani poet Hadi Qaraçay, who resides in Norway. "As long as attacks on the language and culture of Azerbaijani Turks continue, the resistance literature of Southern Azerbaijan will live on," states the young poet from Southern Azerbaijan.

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Link to the original interview in Turkish on the Azerbaijani section of Voice of America:
Ramin Cabbarlı: Mədəniyyətimizə hücumlar davam etdikcə, muqavimət ədəbiyyatı yaşayacaq!