Saadi Yousef

Saadi Youssef (1934 – 13 June 2021) was an Iraqi author, poet, journalist, publisher, and political activist. He published thirty volumes of poetry in addition to seven books of prose.

Life Saadi Youssef studied Arabic literature in Baghdad.

In 2004, the Al Owais Prize for poetry was given to Youssef. In 2007, Youssef participated in the PEN World Voices festival where he was interviewed by the Wild River Review. In 2014, Youssef's poems were forbidden from being included in the Kurdish school curriculum by the Kurdistan Regional Government over a certain poem in which he referred to Kurdistan as "Qardistan," which loosely translates to "Monkey-istan."

He is buried on the eastern side of Highgate Cemetery.

English bibliography Published volumes Without an Alphabet, Without a Face: Selected Poems, translated by Khaled Mattawa (Graywolf, 2002). . Nostalgia, My Enemy, translated by Sinan Antoon and Peter Money (Graywolf, 2012). .

In anthology Literature from the "Axis of Evil": Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Other Enemy Nations, edited by Words without Borders (The New Press, 2006). . Tablet and Pen, edited by Reza Aslan (Norton, 2010). . Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, edited by Melissa Tuckey (University of Georgia Press, 2018). .