Jalal Malaksha, the National Poet of Blood, Mountain, and Guns

Writer, critic, political and social activist, innovative and leading Kurdish poet, Jalal Malaksha, was born on 19.3.1951 in Malakshan village in Sna province, East part of Kurdistan. He completed his primary, secondary, and high school education in Sna. He has been interested in poetry and writing since childhood.

Malaksha is one of the most prominent and influential voices of the Kurdish poetry innovation movement in the East part of Kurdistan and one of the most prominent poets of resistance literature in this part of Kurdistan who has written poetry and stories in both Persian and Kurdish.

Jalal Malaksha initially wrote poetry and stories in Persian and his works were published in the most famous literary magazines of Iran. Because of his strength in writing, he became a member of the Iranian Writers' Association without having a book published.

After the victory of the Iranian Revolution, the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the outbreak of the revolution in the eastern part of Kurdistan, and the attack of the Iranian armed forces on the Kurdish people, Jalal stopped writing in Persian and started writing in Kurdish. He wrote stories, essays, and literary criticism in Kurdish until the end of his life. Malaksha, especially since 1986, when he was active as a member of the writers' board and the editorial board of Srwa Magazine in Urmia, had a great influence in educating two groups of young writers in the eastern part of Kurdistan.

Character Designer: Hemn Qaremani

Malaksha was influenced by Nima Yooshij, Mehdi Akhavan-Sales, and Ahmadi Shamlou in his Persian writings and by Abdullah Goran, Latif Halmat, Abdullah Pashew, and Sherko Bekas in his Kurdish writings.

He was initially a member of the Iranian Writers' Association and later became a member of the editorial board of Srwa Magazine, which was initially published under the supervision of the poet Hemn and continued after Hemn's death under the supervision of Ahmad Qazi. After more than twenty years of working for Srwa Magazine in Urmia, Malaksha returned to Sna and worked as a Kurdish language teacher at the Kurdish Language Institute.

As a peaceful and revolutionary man, Jalal Malaksha never could ignore oppression and tyranny. He was arrested and imprisoned several times for his writings against injustice. However, he continued to write national and resistance poetry for the rest of his life. In a poem, he calls himself the national poet of blood, mountains, and guns. These national poems have led to his book of poems, The Cry of Chains of Captive Words, being unprecedentedly welcomed by the people of the East part of Kurdistan and reprinted several times in the first year of its publication.

Apart from poetry, Malaksha had a powerful pen to write stories and a selection of his stories has been published in a book called Karasat (Disaster). His collection of Kurdish and Persian poems has also been published after his death entitled "Collection of Poetic Works of Jalal Malaksha".

His poems have been translated into Persian, Arabic, English, Libyan, Swedish, and other languages.

Jalal Malaksha passed away on 31.10.2020 in Sna (Sanandaj) and was buried in his hometown of Malakshan village in Sna.

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