21 March 2022
In Celebration of World and Arab Poetry Day, The Bahrain National Museum hosts a seminar on the poetry of the Late Shaikh Isa Bin Rashid Al Khalifa
In commemoration of World and Arab Poetry Day, coinciding March 21 each year, the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities organized a symposium at the Bahrain National Museum on 20 March, 2022, entitled “Longings for Sweet Times of Spring and Roses”, shedding light on the poetry of the late Shaikh Isa bin Rashid Al Khalifa. The symposium was attended by a selection of poets and researchers a, such as Dr. Rashid Najm, Dr. Dheya Al Kaabi , Dr. Khalifa bin Arabi and Dr. Fawaz Al Shurooqi, in addition to the presence of a number of cultural figures and those interested in cultural affairs in Bahrain.
This event is part of cultural bouquet scheduled by the 16th edition of Spring of Culture Festival, which will continue until the end of this month.
Dr. Rashid Najm, a poet himself, presented a lecture on the "Spatial Images in the Lyrical Poems of Shaikh Isa bin Rashid Al Khalifa", whereby he explored the main connotations reflected in the image of the place in the poems of Shaikh Isa bin Rashid, whose words are composed by musicians and performed by famous singing stars in Bahrain, the Gulf and the Arab world. Dr. Najm also said that through the comprehensive extrapolation of the lyrical poems of Shaikh Isa bin Rashid, the main connotations dominating the place are: the image of the homeland, the image of the marine environment and the image of the local environment.
Dr. Dheya Al Kaabi “Representations of Women in the Poetry of Shaikh Isa bin Rashid Al Khalifa, " intervention shed light on a critical survey literary study and an investigation of women's representation in two collections of poems, namely “ The Shade of Afternoon” and "From My Songs". Al-Kaabi pointed out that women represented an essential element in the poetry of Shaikh Isa bin Rashid's creative poetic experience, characterized by the constant presence of women and the homeland and the city. Dr. Al-Kaabi also said that the poetic lexicon in the poet's poems is the jargon of the authentic Bahraini vocabulary that expresses the spirit of Bahrain with its cities, alleyways, sea and beaches.
Dr. Khalifa bin Arabi, in a related context, discussed during an intervention entitled: "The Emotional Presence in National Poems in the Poetry of Shaikh Isa bin Rashid Al Khalifa," some issues related to the presence of Bahrain homeland, memory and women in Shaikh Isa bin Rashid's poems.
Dr. Fawaz Al Shurooqi “Shaikh Isa bin Rashid Al Khalifa’s Stance on the Poetry Movement in the Kingdom of Bahrain” intervention concluded the symposium, shedding light on the literary beginnings of the poet in the 1960s, an era characterized by the birth of the poetic modernity movement in Bahrain at the hands of Ali Abdullah Khalifa, Qassim Haddad and Alawi Al-Hashemi. Dr. Al-Shurooqi went on to say that that Shaikh Isa bin Rashid became the most famous and important lyrical performing poetry icon that Bahrain has ever known. Indeed, Al-Shurooqi asserted that the Late Shaikh Rashid restored confidence in the popular Bahraini jargon derived from the daily talk and terms used by ordinary people and dedicated his poetry to expressing the feelings of the Bahraini lover, achieving, thus, an unparalleled fame in Bahrain and the Arab Gulf states.
