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traditional structure of his contemporaries. While free verse poetry had been in use for hundreds of years, it was considered to be modern and unconventional. Sargon Boulus was very aware of his gift for writing and consequently he did not want to be branded as an ethnic or political writer, rather a humanist "mining the hidden areas of what has been lived through". Poets continue the work of past poets and Sargon considered himself part of that chain of privileged messengers of words. His inspiration emanates from the work of poets spanning from ninth century Abu Tammam to
Wordsworth, Yeats, W. C. Williams and Henry Miller just to name a few. Memories nurtured his themes, particularly childhood impressions. "What guides my steps / to that pool hidden / in the country / of childhood".
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father to work and he would be fascinated with the
English women in their aristocratic homes, "having their tea, seemingly almost half-naked among their flowers and well-kept lawns". This image was in such contrast to the mud huts where the Assyrians lived and different from the females he was surrounded by who were dressed in black most of the time. Sargon recalls: "I've even written about this somewhere, some lines in a poem. Of course I wasn't aware at the time that they were occupying the country, I was too young".
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The combination of a rich
Assyrian-Iraqi heritage and exposure to a variety of literary classics enabled Sargon to develop a unique poetic style and a worldview that was uncommon in the 1960s Iraqi poet community. Over time his style emerged to a tepid reception in part due to his departure from the
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He believed that people's pasts are permanently engraved in their memory waiting to be rediscovered again at some point in time. With aspirations for expressive freedom Sargon veered away from political and nationalistic discourse. He desired to express the truth about all human struggles without
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and most of the
Assyrians were employed by the British, hence the English language fluency by most Habbaniya Assyrians. Sargon's father worked for the British, as the rest of the men in the village, and the place of Sargon's first cherished memories. On rare occasions, Sargon would accompany his
470:("Poetry"). Through many tribulations, Sargon traveled by land and mostly by foot from Baghdad to Beirut where he met his lifelong colleagues and fellow poets. He later made San Francisco his base for almost four decades. He lived a quiet life of an artist, writing poetry and sometimes painting.
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Sargon started publishing poems and short stories as a teenager in various Iraqi journals and magazines, and started to translate
American and British poetry into Arabic. As he became recognized among his peers, he eventually sent his poetry to Beirut where they were published in the prominent
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Sargon was born to an
Assyrian family in the British-built 7-mile enclave of Habbaniya, which was a self-contained civilian village with its own power station on the edge of a shallow lake 57 miles west of Baghdad, Iraq. From 1935 to 1960, Habbaniya was the site of the
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Sargon found his talent for words at an early age and Kirkuk's rich diverse community inspired his work. He was an avid reader but never great at academics.
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and later worked as a journalist, before moving to Beirut In 1967, where he worked as a journalist and a translator. He later emigrated to the
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His poetry resonates with the influence of this period in his life, embracing the Iraqi cultural multiplicity.
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In 1956, Sargon's family moved to the multi-ethnic large city of
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were some of his favorites and poetry was the guiding light.
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455:Franz Kafka, Czeslav Milosz and all the
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