Letter to Obama CLIVE HOLES Abstract Historically, Arabic political poetry composed in regional vernaculars has been a powerful weapon, one used against colonial powers and corrupt Arab governments alike. Increasingly nowadays, however, vernacular poets are directing their fire at the international order, and gaining new audiences as a result of the ease with which their work circulates on the Internet. The Iraqi poet ‘Abb as J  ıj an has gained notoriety through his exploitation of this medium, in particular for his poems on the current political situation in Iraq. This article presents the text and translation of his latest and most famous poem, based on his Internet performance of it. Background Political poetry composed in a vernacular register of Arabic is nothing new: it has been around for well over 100 years, and verse on political subjects in the Classical language goes back much further. Of the vernacular traditions, the Egyptian one is probably the best known in the West, through studies such as Marilyn Booth’s monograph 1 on Mahm ud Bayram al-T unis  ı (1893–1961), the early 20th-century scourge of British colonialism, and Kamal Abdel-Malek’s book 2 on his artistic (if not ideological) heir, Ah ˙ mad Fu’ ad Nigm (1929–), that cruel and devastating critic of Anwar Sadat. 3 Relatively little western scholarly attention has been paid to the vernacular poets of other Arab countries, 4 however. For example, nothing, as far as I know, has been published in the West on the poetry of ‘Abb ud al-Karkh  ı (1861–1946), the Baghdad-born social and political commentator on the Iraq of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and a towering figure in Iraqi vernacular poetry. 5 Clive Holes, Oriental Institute, Pusey Lane, Oxford OX1 2LE, UK. Email: clive.holes@orinst.ox.ac.uk 1 M. Booth, Bayram al-Tunisi’s Egypt: Social; Criticism and Narrative Strategies (Exeter: Ithaca, 1990). 2 K. Abdel-Malek, A Study of the Vernacular Poetry of Ah ˙ mad Fu’ ad Nigm (Leiden: Brill, 1990). 3 Abdel-Malek’s book covers Nigm’s poetry of the 1960s and 1970s. Even after periods in prison and a stroke, Nigm is still going strong at the age of 81, and has recently turned his fire on Husni Mubarak and the notion that he might be contemplating the creation of a political dynasty. 4 I recently co-authored a study of social and political poetry by Jordanian and Sinai Bedouin vernacular poets covering the period 1956 (the Suez crisis) to 2003 (the US-led invasion of Iraq): C. Holes and S.S. Abu Athera, Poetry and Politics in Contemporary Bedouin Society (Reading: Ithaca, 2009). There is also a certain amount of political material in Clinton Bailey’s Bedouin Poetry from Sinai and the Negev (Oxford: OUP,1991). 5 His collected poems fill two large volumes. I hope to go some way to filling this lacuna in the near future with a critical study. Middle Eastern Literatures, Vol. 14, No. 2, August 2011 ISSN 1475-262X print/ISSN 1475-2638 online/11/020185-11 Ó 2011 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/1475262X.2011.583468