Jack Hirschman: Egyptian Poems and Testimonies

Introduction by Fernando Rendón; edited by Ashraf Aboul-Yazid; cover painting by Yassin Harraz

Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
Asia Journalists Association President

CAIRO: This month, a special edition of the Silk Road Literature Anthology will be published to commemorate the late poet Jack Hirschman, responding to World Poetry Movement’ s call to make the month of October 2021 devoted to celebrate this iconic poetic figure around the world.

As a National Coordinator of World Poetry Movement in Egypt, I suggested to publish the coming anthology to include contributions from the creative pens of Egypt. Poets, writers and artists are all invited to participate. I already got the best artwork for the event; a cover painting by the unique artist Dr. Yassin Harraz, who teaches art in the university of Alexandria.

The eminent poet Fernando Rendón, Colombia, the World Poetry Movement, Coordinating Committee, wrote a preface to this anthology;

“His life was again the paradigm of a poet of our time and of all time. Jack walked the streets of San Francisco distributing poems and eventually traversed the streets of the planet with a shattering pace, stomping his feet. At some point a fellow traveler and contradictor in politics of the beatnik generation, whose countercultural spirit spread like wildfire in the United States and the West, Jack did not stop in the search for dharma, with the ambiguity and spirit of contradiction that decided the search of Kerouac, who was mooing to the right; nor to the Tibetan Buddhism whose spirit presides over the Jack Kerouac School, founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman, in Boulder; nor did he approach the Zen Buddhism practiced by Gary Snyder….”

Rendón also wrote: “Jack Hirschman marched tumultuously in the streets against that war. He loved peace as his own life. Many years later, he would direct the iconic San Francisco International Poetry Festival and Left Curve magazine and create the Revolutionary Poets Brigade…”

Egyptian participants are kindly requested to send their Arabic poems, testimonies and artworks to this email: ashraf_dali@yahoo.com. The deadline is 20 October. The book will be available in print in Egypt, and it will be posted online for free reading for the whole world.