A Narrolytic Expressive Therapy For A Wriggling Soul

An Iraqi Physician

By Anwer Ghani

I am an Iraqi physician and you know; Iraqis are just pieces of love but when I smile in front of my patient my heart looks to the remote lands. Yes I am an Iraqi poet and you know; Iraqis are just dreaming but our letters are crippled and our papers are blind. Yes, I am a physician in provision and a poet in passion, but when I write a word, the letters become red because of our cheap blood in the brooks, and the paper becomes empty because of our lost dream under the sun and the pen becomes useless because of our stolen flowers by a universal thief. I am the sad poet from the sad land and my poem is just a crippled Arabian girl. I am a useless physician from the faked land and my management is just a broken mirror and a crashed flower. Yes I am an Arabian man from a land that doesn't want to be independent. When my people exit from their illusion and weakness, surely, I will make a big cake and I will celebrate with every creature, even the universal thieves.

Analysis of An Iraqi Physician by Dr Pragya Suman

Mr Anwer Ghani is an Iraqi doctor, who also writes in an exemplary way in a particular genre of prose poetry. Beside writing and serving as a doctor he is also energetically active on social media and always encourages budding writers, through his Arcs poetry magazine.

An Iraqi Physician is narrative expressive prose poem which is trademark of Mr Ghani's writing.

Expressive narrative writing in itself is like healing therapy which pays more attention to the discreet feeling rather than the objects, memories, and peoples in the content. This type of writing comes from the core of heart and form, structure, spellings, verb agreement doesn't keep much matter. Emotion spills in a simple, lucid,and limpid way as ink well of heart is like that!

Sometimes it is turbulent, instant and unpredictable as the heart used to be in the emergence of emotions.

It's not astonishing that expressive narrative writing is used in the medical field as healing therapy. It has five steps.

( 1 ) Experience pain

( 2) Break the silence by sharing shattered story

( 3) Make your emotion in a logical framework ,by distancing yourself from the pain. Here TS Eliot's theory comes to rescue.

(4) search sense of story. Here stand outside the experience, see the complete picture.

( 5 ) Rewriting our story and moving forward by feeding philosophical energy into the creation.

Previously Mr Ghani used to write in a traditional way but later he acquired a style of prose poetry. Prose poems are written in horizontal blocks,without line breaks. They use poetry devices as like in the traditional sense except form and structure. In bodied form they are prose like but their abstract form is of verse. An amalgamation of prose and poem !

Background of Prose poems of Mr Ghani are painted in the dismal destiny of Iraq and its present tortures. He acquired narratolytic expressive writing in 2003 ,which is also coinciding with the acute agony of Iraq. His poems are somehow linked with it.

Poem An Iraqi Physician is brimming with metaphors like crashed flower, universal thief, blind papers, Arabian girls etc, they are used to manifest the sad story of Iraq, where human life is very cheap. Poet says letters are red because blood is in the brook! Blood is cheaper than ink ! Universal thief is a capitalistic empire which is invisible like a thief moulding the world on his own terms!

Yet the poet is optimistic and has not loosened his hope. One day conditions of his motherland would improve and he will celebrate it even along with its oppressors! What a generous gesture!

I think the pain of Iraq has driven poet towards narrolytic expressive writing which is like a medicine for a wriggling soul!

He cures himself through his poems!

Copyright@Dr Pragya Suman

Biography: Anwer Ghani is an award winning poet from Iraq. He was born in 1973 in Babylon. His name has appeared in more than fifty literary magazines and twenty anthologies in USA, UK and Asia and he has won many prizes; one of them is the "World Laureate-Best Poet in 2017 from WNWU".