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Merbed

Merbed documentation project

Merbed is the name of the annual Poetry Festival in Basra, in the south of Iraq. This year was the first time after the fall of Saddam and brought together Iraqi poets, writers and other artists from all parts of Iraq and from the diaspora.
Until last year Saddam exploited this well known festival for his own political purposes, but this time it was free: a celebration of liberation, a meeting of old friends. It was a first attempt to deal with past pains and articulate a future for free artistic expression and contributing to enlightenment and development of Iraqi society at large.

Under the current circumstances at the beginning of April, when the crisis started to gain signifiance on a daily basis, the festival was held in a closed environment of the Hotel and a Hall with only invited participants. However, a lot of readings and meetings have been documented on Minidisk and on camera.

The first aim of this Merbed documentation project is to publish all this material on a web site and on a CD-ROM, in collaboration with the Iraqi National Union of Writers (chapters Basrah and Baghdad), with Radio Reedflute and with RastaSoftware. This will open an avenue for publishing more of the artists present at Merbed, collecting texts, translations, pictures, press clippings, etc. The web site will be updated regularly and moderated (by experienced web editors from Iraq?).

This web site and the (equally updated) CD ROM distributions would serve the purpose of completing and expanding the documentation, showcasing the project on radio programs, cultural events and (international) festivals and gatherings, and of course anybody interested in contemporary cultural life, who has access to the web.

The longer term perspective is to create a much wider outreach and participation of next years Merbed, by creating a parallel on-line platform, which would enable live streaming and interactivity from other locations.

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