Baku, Azerbaijan, August 1977.
From left to right: the super lovely, intelligent and attractive Ana Mercedes Rodríguez Acevedo, my future wife, myself, Merya (Finland). Sitting in foreground: Sergio (Chile), Luis (Spain).
Merce is helping me to hold a glass. No, I wasn´t drunk. It was just fun, a playful action.
That was during a summer trip of a group of some twenty students. They were all at that time, like ourselves, students at the University of Leipzig, Germany.
We visited Moscow, Yerevan (Armenia), Baku, (Azerbaijan) and Kiev (Ukraine).
This photo was made when Merce and I were still in our initial phase of mutual attraction. Few days later, we had our first kiss in a hidden corner of a boat at the Sewan lake in Armenia.
And last but not least, we have been together since that memorable trip.

Four of my Spanish Poems
in an Argentinian Anthology

Four of my poems written in Spanish were included In "Yaaa Aliii", an anthology of contemporary Iraqi poetry, published by Clase Turista, Buenos Aires. Although the anthology was published in 2006, I was only able to buy it and get it delivered in September 2008. (Please find below more details about the poems and the book.)

Der Darss

Shafts of light in a cathedral of trees,
columns, planes and arches, dark surfaces,
beetles with crimson shields.

The trees are comprehensible in terms of others:
those electrified, wounded, somnolent, vivacious,
and those hospitable trees.

We arrive at men and women,
counterfeited in stone and sinking.
Soon the nearby sea will take them to his garden.

Anwar Al-Ghassani
(A section from the long poem "ID", 1998)
Der Darss: The Darss peninsula, Germany.

Jimi Hendrix

                         (James Marshall Hendrix 1942- 1970)

His music is suspicious knowledge,
smashed at our ears
to maintain us alive till next morning;
sunken vessels, separated, each in a region.

Dreams to pay for,
no celebrations,
ancestral pain, offered
as equilibrium

on roads where we inquire:
Did they already eat?

And they, only on casual encounters, ask:  
O, why the separation?

For no purpose or reason;         
our lives wouldn’t be spared
if we kept silent.

Roads don’t bring the child home;
they overlap and change
as they extend to where values
we cherish and die for
are equalized:

Only the eye,
is image trap and scream
that displays
a hazy white landscape.

Anwar Al-Ghassani
San José, September 30, 2000 / August 15, 2008

Goddess Samia Gamal
(Egyptian belly dancer, 1924 – 1994)

Sie schafft ein immer lebendiges Bild von sich selbst.

(Anspielung an einem Satz von italienischen Architekten Carlo Ratti über Städte die sich ständig dynamisch ändern.)

Our gatherings to watch
her matter and light
transform to body and movement,
were never trivial events.
The to and fro of her body,
within time continuum,
was the pendulum of daily life.

On all days, when we rubbed her skin,
we obtained her adolescent aroma.
Exhibitionist of her body,
her gaming alluded
to virtual regions, her potentials,
solely attainable in dreams,
or as a package of godly bliss,
maintaining alive
the collective joy of our days.

She knew, seas and cities need our gifts;
thus her shoulders rocked seas and cities,
offering them our brotherhood.

Anwar Al-Ghassani
Berlin, Sunday, May 25, 2008

NEW --- More Poems In Arabic Uploaded

I am now uploading more poems in Arabic from the 1993 unpublished collection "Anashidul Ruh Al-Iraqia Al-Haiema" (Cantos Of The Errant Iraqi Soul)

The background story:

Due to my negligence and publishing difficulties this collection, written in 1993, remained sleeping among my papers during fifteen years. I didn´t even try to publish individual poems from the collection (perhaps with the exception of one or two).
I have now decided to do justice to the poems and publish most of the collection here at my Website until I have enough money to publish it as book on demand as I did with my recent collection "Second Patria" (see below on this page), or until some philanthropist comes along and volunteers to finance the publication of the collection.
Due to temporary difficulty with editing Arabic texts, I am scanning the poems and uploading them as images. Please use the zoom device to enlarge the text if necessay.
Finally, without intending to be pretentious, I consider these poems as fairly good, something I do not easily and always state about my poems. Please read and decide for yourself.

Click here to go to the Poetry Section, there click on the name of the collection under "Poems in Arabic - II"

We, poets, are world citizens. We foster intercultural dialog, mutual understanding and peace

My dear friend, poet Dr. Tarek Eltayeb, ambassador of intercultural dialog of Austria in a recent activity.

Dialogtour am Rathausplatz

29. April 2008 am Rathausplatz

Ein großer Andrang von Schulklassen herrschte am 29. April am Rathausplatz, als die Veranstaltung zur „Dialogtour“ eröffnet wurde, bei der ein vielfältiges, multikulturelles Musik-, Film- und Informationsprogramm geboten wurde.

Für Bundesministerin Dr. Claudia Schmied wird Integration zu einem immer wichtigeren Faktor für künftige Bildungserfolge. Im Rahmen der „Dialogtour“ gibt es heute rund 200 Veranstaltungen. Bürgermeister Mag. Matthias Stadler: „St. Pölten liegt mit einem Migrantenanteil von etwas über 11 Prozent eher im unteren Durchschnitt. Es gibt zur Integration ein Angebot auch in den Schulen und Kindergärten, wobei sicherlich ein zusätzlicher Bedarf gegeben ist.“

46 poems, 76 pages, written in English about German themes.
Published by Book Surge Publishing.

Cover design: Manuel Salam Al-Ghassani Rodríguez
Cover drawing: Remembering Varna - Figures at the Beach, 1988, by Anwar Al-Ghassani
(original: 21x27cm, watercolor pencils and China ink)

The collection is now available ($10.99) at:

Description: Poems written in English by Iraqi poet Anwar Al-Ghassani as an homage to Germany, his second homeland, where he lived, studied and worked during three periods between 1967 and 1983. Those were years of his emotional and intellectual maturing and growth, of creative and happy times. They were also his years of the motorcycle and of explorations. These poems are also about reminiscences and about his almost yearly visits to Germany. They are about wonderful people, friends and places. Al-Ghassani writes poetry in Arabic, English, German and Spanish.

---> Poetry Promotion in The Web (using media and platforms of conventional Web, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0)
(45 pages, paper in Spanish)

This paper will be presented at my school´s research week (Jornadas de Investigación, ECCC, Universidad de Costa Rica, May 12-16, 2008).

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the founding of our school, Escuela de Ciencias de la Comunicación Colectiva - ECCC (School of Mass Communication Sciences) of the Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR), the students have designed T-shirts carrying faculty images. Here is "my" T-shirt. It reads: Anwar Rocks, 40 years are nothing. I d ALGHASSANI.

Interpretation: "Anwar rocks", well, I have always tried to do my best to be useful to my students. The "40 years are nothing" alludes to the recently published autobiography of Alberto Cañas, one of Costa Rica´s well-known intellectuals and professor emeritus of the UCR. The book carries the title "80 years are Nothing" and was published on his 80th birthday. That is to say, 80 years, that is not a big deal, I am just warming up. The "o" in the word "no" carries the colors of the Costa Rican flag. As to the "d", this is the logo of the popular Websites editor DreamWeaver. It make reference to the fact that I mainly teach computer-mediated communication. So, instead of the usual heart and "I love ALGHASSANI", you have "I DreamWeaver ALGHASSANI" which is fun and makes a lot of sense !!!!

On my 24th year at my dear ECCC, I would say, 24, 40, 71 - my age - are nothing. O, yes, Anwar rocks and will continue rocking ... I am just warming up !!!!

Thanks to our dear students and their Association and thanks to Fernando Arce for his initiative.