The cover of the Tree of Poetry

The Tree of Poetry

A Poetic Collection

Edited, collected and shared

By

Dr Hana Al-Bayyati

English Department

College of Art,

Basrah University

2011-2012

2

                            

                :Introduction

This poetic collection is the product of two

successive pioneering attempts at poetry competition,

held in English department on the anniversary of the

foundation of Basrah University, supervised by the

head of English department, College of Arts,

prepared, edited and shared by Dr Hana Al-Bayyati.

The objectives of this academic activity are to

encourage students of English department to write,

translate, read and understand English language and

literature properly. The number of participants in the

first competition was twenty students, five of them

wrote their own poems; the rest participated in the

"Recital of Class Poetry", or "Verse Translation". In

the second competition, the number of the poems

written by students increased to nineteen. In the first

attempt, the students hesitated to write English

poetry. The encouragement of poetry teacher helped

them to write more poems.

The referee committee in the first competition was a

group of four teachers selected from the same

department to announce the three winners. In the

second, a teacher from the department and two

members of PRT group from the American Embassy

were invited to evaluate the competition and to give

marks for each poem, to select the three winners. Dr

Hana's participation in the two competitions was to

encourage and inspire the students to have this

activity. Therefore, her two poems, though recited,

were not included in the evaluation.

All the twenty one poems in this collection are

written by fifteen students, edited by Dr Hana Al-

Bayyati. Some of the poems needed a few changes,

the others big changes (9 poems); the result of this

was the rejection of the students of their new edited

poems. In order to solve the problem, the editor

accepted the demand to share them their poems.

Classifying them according to a certain order, the

editor opens the collection with her own two poems,

the six mutual poems, and then the rest of the poems.

The publication of this collection would encourage

more students to prepare for the third competition in

the forthcoming academic year (2011-2012).

The names of the students who participated in the

two competitions would be arranged in alphabetical

order:

1-Ali Abdul-Razzaq and Dr Hana Al-Bayyati-  

"Sweet Dreams" [first competition]

 (third year)

2-Ali Muhammad Hussein, "O Father!"

(second year)

3-Hanan Jawad Kadhim, "Forever" & "Still have

hope" [first competition]

 (fourth year)

4-Hasan Salman, "Farewell Freedom"

(second year)

5-Hiyam Abdul-Razzaq and Dr Hana Al-Bayyati, "To

My Dear Country"

(second year)

6- Huda Hussein Rumayyah and Dr Hana Al-

Bayyati, "A Conflict"

(second year )

7-Iman Shubbar Ashur and Dr Hana Al-Bayyati

"Love and Blame"

(second year)

8- Maha Sabah Salim and Dr Hana Al-Bayyati. "Give

Peace a Chance"

(third year)

9- Malik Amir Abdul-Wahhab and Dr Hana AlBayyati

"Lovely Mother"

(third year)

10- Muhammad Zuhair Al-Asady,"Exclusive Sorrow"

(second year)

11 -Muntadhar Muhammad J'aaz and Dr Hana Al-Bayyati

"Take and Do not Take"

(second year)

12 -Narmeen Nazar Iskandar and Dr Hana Al-Bayyati

"Children of Sad Baghdad"

(third year)

13-Samer Abdul-Karem Nasir,"God is All Alive", and

"Shining Virtue" [first competition]

(Third year)

14-Shahad Lu'ay Muhammad and Dr Hana Al-

Bayyati "Tamed to Die"

(Third year)

15 -Ziyad Abdul-Razzaq Al-Maliki, "Killed Being Frank" and

"Non existant " [first competition]

(Second year)

16-Dr Hana Al-Bayyati "Ambition Has Two Scenes"

and "To My Only Son" [first competition]

(Poetry Instructor)