The poet as prophet: Trajectories of prophecy in contemporary Iraqi poetry of exile

In Arabic poetry, from pre-Islamic literature to today, the exiled poet frequently embodied the role of the foreseer, with a progressive shift from religion to politics that fully took place in the last century. This paper will examine the trope of the prophetic role that Iraqi poets in exile have felt called upon to assume. After an overview on the manifestations of the two often interweaving macro-topics of exile and prophecy, this paper will focus on Amal al-Jubūrī’s poetry related to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Selected examples from other displaced Iraqi poets, in a generational perspective ranging from the 1950s to the 2000s will be provided, in order to demonstrate how the path of the poetic-prophetic reading of the present and future of the nation changes, alongside the his tory of the country.