Days like nights indeed? on time perception in the works of the Kurdish-Iraqi Poet Buland al-aydari

This paper deals with the methods which the Kurdish-Iraqi expatriate poet Buland Akram al-aydari (1926 Baghdad-1996 London) used to express his experiences and feelings of exile as the representative of an entire generation of writers, and describes the relationship between intellectuals and the regime in Iraq in the mid-20th century. It analyzes the manner in which these methods contribute to the dissemination of his message in the process of literary communication. The main artistic method which will be examined is that of patterns and themes of time in his poems and their meanings, based on the collection Khu?uwat fi l-ghurba (Steps in Exile), in addition to other artistic devices found in his other works, in order to show how they contribute to understanding the evolution of ways of expression in Modern Iraqi literature versus Classical Arabic compositions. The paper consists of three sections: an introduction to cultural life in Iraq in the mid-20th century and the exile experienced by leftist writers; the unique artistic devices used by al-aydari in his poems; and a comparison between expressions of time in Classical Arabic poetry and in the works of al-aydari and his contemporaries, as a result of their relations with the regime.