Al-Bayati lived most of his adult life in exile — Cairo, Moscow, Madrid, Damascus — and his poetry is haunted by the lost Baghdad of the 1940s and 50s. He pioneered the Arabic free-verse poem alongside al-Sayyab and al-Mala'ika, and was one of the first Arab poets to write under the influence of Lorca, Eliot, and Hikmet.
Recurring themes
Arabic free verse
political exile
the Baghdad of memory
the Andalusian inheritance
Selected works
- 1950Angels and Devils
- 1956Glory to the Children and Olives
- 1960The Words That Do Not Die
- 1964The Book of Sea