Bedouin Poetry as an Art of Memory. The Dialogue between the Present and the past in the Political Poetry of the Negev Bedouin

Abstract

Bedouin poetry has yet to be explored in the context of memory studies, let alone the poetry of the Negev Bedouin. This article, based on a corpus of hundreds of poems documented between the mid-1940s and late-1980s, reviews excerpts from ten political verses composed by Negev Bedouin poets. These verses attest to the power of Bedouin poetry to evoke – at times in just a word or two – a wide range of meanings, a historical depth that may be submersed in a few expressions, and the ways in which these expressions activate memories of the past to communicate something of significance about the present.

Keywords

• bedouin poetry
• political poetry
• art of memory
• jewish–arab conflict
• 1948 war
• negev bedouin