Ghada a. MohaMMad, Wafaa a. abdulaali / MahMoud darWish and Tanure ojaide:  
PoeTs of exilic consciousness and rePresenTaTives of oPPressed naTions
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Ghada A  Mohammad, Wafaa A  Abdulaali
Mahmoud Darwish and Tanure Ojaide: Poets of exilic 
consciousness and representatives of oppressed nations
1 Introduction 
Darwish1, the national poet of Palestine, and Ojaide2, the voice of Nigeria, are both 
poets that belong to countries that witnessed different types of political, economic, and 
social upheavals. The purpose of this study is thus to examine Darwish and Ojaide as 
poets of exile by studying their exilic experiences and exploring particular poems that 
consider their external and internal sense of displacement. 
It is devastating both for the individual and community to have the experience 
of living in an area that is ruled by foreigners, ones who have changed its familiar 
characteristics in order to create their own homeland and turn that place into one of 
exile, where people are treated as refugees rather than native inhabitants. This notion 
of internal as well as external exile occupies a great deal of Darwish’s poetry. 
Using his national pride and attachment to the land, Darwish strongly believes 
that the Palestinian sense of belonging cannot be erased by exile, marginalization, 
and an apartheid colonial state. As such, he uses his poetry to create a new identity 
by instilling Palestine “in the hearts of Palestinians in order to keep it alive in their 
memory” (Zid, 2014, 55). Darwish adopts the traditional role of the poet as the voice 
and representative of his people. Simultaneously, what makes Darwish closer to the 
masses is his adoption of certain modern developments in Arabic poetry, such as the 
use of shorter lines, everyday images, and common objects as symbols, “along with the 
influence of international revolutionary literature’s emphasis on collective representa-
tion of the experiences of ordinary working people” (Mattawa, 2009, 225). In this way, 
he is considered the spokesperson and consciousness of the Palestinians. 
Similarly, the feeling of exile is inevitable in the African poet’s imagination. It was 
nurtured in the postcolonial era, which witnessed the rise of dictatorial regimes that 
bred social insecurity and economic corruption. The African citizens, particularly the 
Nigerians, live in a state of alienation and marginalization within the boundaries of 
1 Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was a Palestinian poet and author, who is regarded as the national 
poet of Palestine. He wrote poetry and prose and earned numerous prizes for his work. Many of his 
poems speak about exile and the loss of homeland. 
2 Tanure Ojaide (born 1948) is a Nigerian poet and professor. He has won numerous awards for his liter-
ary work. He is known for his criticism of imperialism, religion and environmental destruction. 
DOI:10.4312/ars.14.1.41-53
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their own country, where they are destined to live an internal and psychological exile. 
The loss of the citizens’ rights to the country’s natural resources, which are controlled 
by foreign companies and the ruling class, affects the well-being of the inhabitants, 
who are treated as strangers. Such loss of one’s homeland and its fortune reveals the 
reality of exile, which induces Ojaide to lament that loss in terms of dirges. 
2 Darwish and exile 
Darwish’s life as an exile had a great effect on his identity and career. Being a poet and 
an activist, exilic life “brought me into houses, /into hearts,/ into ears of wheat [and]/ 
has given me an identity” (Darwish, 1980, 41-43). He became an emblem of exile that 
incarnated the trauma of a nation of exiled people. The colonization of his homeland 
made exile his sole identity, by which he defined himself. Therefore, being a symbol 
of exile means being a symbol of sorrow, and so the poet’s verse serves as the expres-
sion of the collective Palestinian predicament. The poet’s experience in exile includes 
searching for his homeland, which demands a search for the shattered self and a lost 
identity. As an identity-seeker, some of Darwish’s poems are presented in the dialogue 
form where the interlocutor speaks to or about the “other”, who is mostly Darwish 
himself. In his poem “I am only him”, for example, the poet describes an absent “other”, 
or himself, as “melt[ing] away” out of fatigue and “swallowed” by darkness, because of 
the long journey he has been on; 
Therefore he walks and walks and walks
until he melts away 
and the shadows swallow him up at the end of this journey
I am only him
And he is only me
In different images. (Darwish, 2009a, 27) 
Darwish draws the image of the exile and the collapse of identity. Now he belongs to 
the dead realm of shadows and darkness. 
3 Homeland vs  homelessness 
The concept of homeland can refer to the native country, fatherland, the nation, an 
attachment to a time and place, and the feeling of or longing for being at home. It is a 
place of shelter, dreams, and stability that gives the feeling of safety. The displacement 
from one’s home means the exiled person is “always out of place” (Said, 2000, 180).
Darwish’s profound connection with the land qualifies him as the “poet of the 
homeland” (Rahman, 2008, xiv). His name is associated with Palestine and cannot 
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be separated from its ordeals. Darwish devoted his poetry to the expression of his 
love and attachment to his homeland. In his poem “I belong here” (Darwish, 2000, 
39), for example, the poet asserts his belonging to his native place. He presents home 
as a centring place that embraces his birth, family, and friends. This home shapes his 
memories and life, pleasures and sorrows, even “the prison cell/ with a chilly window” 
of a usurped homeland seems to be worthy, it is “a panorama of my own”. At the heart 
of the condition of exile is the state of homelessness, which implies both the loss of a 
home and the need for one. Thus, though he lives in exile, the poet’s verse, “[i]n the 
deep horizon of my word” revives him and provides “an immortal olive tree” and 
a home. The olive tree is a symbol of Palestine, its perpetual green emblemizes the 
eternity of the poet’s homeland. Darwish’s attachment to his lost home becomes a 
stimuli to regain or to keep the memory of that home by poetry: “I have learned and 
dismantled all the words in order to draw from them a single word: Home” (qtd. in 
Bowman, 1994, 149). 
Darwish adopted history as a raw material to revive Palestinian history, which 
had been obliterated by the occupiers. Thus Darwish states that “we should defend 
not only the legitimacy of our existence in the present, but also the legitimacy of our 
existence in the past (Hadidi, 1999, 347). In “Take Care of the Stags, Father” (Darwish, 
2009b, 9-13), Darwish embraces the history of his land as the substance on which 
he builds his argument and proves the legitimacy of his existence in the past and the 
present. The stag was sacred in ancient times, when it became a symbol of the gods of 
fertility as Tammuz, Ba’al, Adonis and Attis (Sawah, 1996, 276). Darwish uses the stag, 
the sacrifice of Ba’al, the Canaanite god, in his poem, in order to return to the shin-
ing, ancient past. The poet asks his father not for love because love is innate in their 
hearts; he rather asks for the father’s knowledge to spur in him the power and strength 
that enables him “to give the land/ a gazelle”, to regain the Canaanite land, the land of 
gazelle and daisy: “Don’t give me love, I whispered, I want to give the land a gazelle 
instead/ Explain your distant beginning for me, Father, to see you as I do,/ a teacher of 
the book of earth, from Aleph to Ya’, and plant me there.” The speaker asks his father, 
who can be a representation of ancient Palestinian history, to be “a teacher of the book 
of earth”, of the beginnings of Palestine. He wants to learn from his father about his 
land as he aspires to be part of his book, he wants his father to “plant me there” to be 
the inheritor of this land as well as a tool that aids in teaching the love of the land to 
the next generation. 
The death of the father, “You were hanging from your hands on the cactus in the 
plains”, symbolizes the hanging of the present that is dominated by “the sunset” with 
its oppression and darkness. However, the moment of death explodes the legitimacy 
of the present, and hence the poet evokes Canaanite history to create a sacred, realistic 
legend, which depends on man’s first biography: “We were here before time and we 
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shall remain here for the fields to become green.” The Palestinians’ birthright in pos-
sessing the land is defended here to reveal the occupation’s forgery of truth. 
4 The battle of returning home 
The call for return is one of the most urgent aspects of Palestinian exilic experience. 
Home-coming is part of the Palestinian consciousness and being. The dream of re-
turning home becomes a means of resistance and a kind of faith and credo, upon 
which modern Palestinian history and identity depend. In his poem “The Bridge” 
(Darwish, 2000, 171-173), Darwish narrates the tragedy of three Palestinians: “an 
old man, his daughter, and an ancient soldier”. The three challenge all the dangers 
on their way home: “We walked on feet/ and crawling on hands we return.” Their 
insistence on returning home is stronger than that of the rock itself, which is a sym-
bol of strength and persistence, thus “the rock was atrophying” before the strength 
of their will. The road of return is risky as they “don’t know that the way is/ blood, 
trap, and extermination”. Returning home, then, is viewed as ultimate death and the 
challenges are immense. Everyone who has tried to cross the bridge is doomed, “the 
river was spitting its banks/ chunks of meat crumbled/ in the faces of returners”. The 
heroes must face a violent, frenzied river, which is a symbol of the fake borders of 
Israeli soldiers. The old man, who is presented as a trope of history, tradition, the 
old generation, and religion, is full of hope that he will be at home soon, he “touches 
the key” of his house. Yet his daughter, who is the symbol of the young generation, 
says desperately: “but the houses, oh, father, are relics!” In this sense, the father’s 
houseless key becomes a state of exile. Then, the ancient soldier and the old man are 
killed by the bullets of “the guards of the borders”, who “protect the borders from 
yearning”. Moreover, the daughter is raped just as the land was earlier raped. The 
occupation conjures up death in different ways: death in exile or under the rain in a 
humiliating way, and whoever rejects this and insists on returning home must die on 
the bridge. The poem reveals not only the confusion, apprehensiveness and eternity 
of torture that accompany the dreamers of return, but also envisions the possibility 
of the homeland vanishing. 
5 Homeland of words 
The lack of home led Darwish to create an imaginary homeland, “we have a country 
of words” (qtd. in Udhari, 2005, 14). To Darwish, “a people without poetry are a con-
quered people” (qtd. in Rahman, 2008, 3). He also argues, “I renew myself by acknowl-
edging defeat, and I resist through poetry and language because this area is not defeat-
able” (qtd. in Mattawa, 2009, 322). Accordingly, poetry becomes a significant weapon 
that may contribute to restoring the land, and in keeping with the spirit of resistance. 
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Moreover, as Darwish states in an interview: “Poems can’t establish a state, but can 
establish a metaphorical homeland in the minds of the people. I think my poems have 
built some houses in this landscape” (qtd. in Rahman, 2008, 3). The poet employs his 
poetry to construct homes for the homeless. Darwish, the muse of the Palestinians, 
needs compensation for his geographical homeland that can be a haven to his exiled 
self. He seeks not only a return to a geographical or emotional place, but also a recrea-
tion of the self within the exilic condition. 
Darwish’s victorious return to his own self is embodied in his masterpiece, “Mu-
ral” (Darwish, 2009b, 102-145), which was written after surviving cardiovascular 
death during open-heart surgery. The poem shows through various visions the poet’s 
insistence on challenging death by proving his own existence as a man of thought: 
“One day I will become what I want/ One day I will become an idea. No sword will 
carry it/ to the wasteland and no book.” The poet is aware that “an idea” cannot be 
defeated, for it is unlike a man and cannot be imprisoned, exiled or killed (Coates, 
2008, 68). His idea that lies in his poetry becomes a fundamental source of fertility, 
“like a rain on a mountain that has cracked/ from a single sprout/ so neither force/ nor 
fugitive justice can win.” Such productive power stands against the futility of violence 
that leads to the wandering of justice which emblemizes the Palestinians’ exilic right 
in possessing the land. Darwish uses his mortal sense of void to create his immortal 
being which is incarnated in his literary work: “my poem’s land is green.” The poet’s 
language is the essential material in reconstructing his creative self and in restoring 
the occupied country. 
Darwish, who has “a heroic wakeful night at the gates of exile”, bears his reader on 
the wings of his vision to declare his urgent need for his language as a form of asylum: 
My nurse says: You used to hallucinate
Often and scream at me:
I don’t want to return to anyone,
I don’t want to return to any country
After this long absence….
I want only to return
To my language in the distances of cooing. (Darwish, 2009b, 102-145)
The poet’s language is the essential material in reconstructing his creative self and re-
storing the occupied country. In “Mural”, Darwish shows his powerful belief in his 
visions, “And as Christ walked on the lake,/ I walked in my vision”, and their truthful-
ness is compared to Christ’s miracles. By these visions that form a significant part of 
his poetry, Darwish interprets, draws, and recreates the map of Palestine from which 
he is alienated and to which he yearns to return. 
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6 Ojaide and the Niger Delta
Like Darwish, Ojaide treats the dilemma of his country from which he is alienated in his 
work. In “No Longer Our Country” (Ojaide, 1991, 8), for example, the poet illuminates 
the transformation of his country into exile: “Our own country was a dream/ so beautiful 
while it lasted,/ and now we are exiles in a country that was once ours.” The Niger Delta 
lost its golden past and prosperity to become a mere dream. Oil exploration results in a 
topographical, as well as ethical changes in the poet’s homeland and its population, which 
intensifies the sense of loss. According to Africans, the land is “sacred and dedicated to 
the ancestors” (Ojaide, 2009, 7). It is a significant endowment from deities, the eternal 
mother earth and the water goddess, and thus this spiritual gift must be preserved. In this 
poem, Ojaide weeps for the lost heritage represented by the warriors “who kept us from 
savage violations” and “the healers/ who offering themselves as ritual beasts saved/ their 
neighbors from scourges?” These are the revered ancestors, the protectors and defenders 
of the land. Therefore, in “Elegy for Nostalgia” (Ojaide, 2010, 124) the poet expresses the 
nation’s need for these lost spirits, that are removed by the present leadership, in order 
to restore the wasted history. Ojaide insists on “sing[ing] of ancestors, heroes, gods, and 
chroniclers” in an attempt to regain an obliterated cultural identity. 
Imperialism pollutes and destroys not only the Nigerian environmental landscape 
but also its cultural and traditional icons, represented by “the sacred tree” and “to-
tem eagle”, as Ojaide states in “No Longer Our Country”(Ojaide, 1981, 8) “Our sacred 
trees have been cut down/to make armchairs for the rich and titled:/ our own totem 
eagle, that bird of great heights,/ has been shot at by thoughtless guardian.” Many Af-
rican cultures believe in “intimate ontological relationships between humans, animals, 
plants and inanimate objects” (Vest, 2009, 20), which can be considered a mystical 
connection between folk and particular factors and nature. This is shown in Ojaide’s 
recurrent references to trees as a symbol of growth and belonging, and the totem eagle 
that is symbolic of freedom, power, and spiritual energy. The poet associates the envi-
ronmental disaster represented by the killing of these sacred creatures with the loss of 
land, as well as vision. The absence of the trees and the totem eagle points to both the 
physical and spiritual desecration of the homeland. Moreover, the corrupt Nigerian 
politicians who lack the right vision appear as “thoughtless” guardians who collaborate 
with the imperialists to make their people suffer cultural and ideological uprooting. 
The invasion of these exploiters is challenged by Ojaide, who believes in the power 
of literature and words as “a weapon against the denial of basic human rights”, fighting 
corruption and authoritarianism. Ojaide’s poetics of resistance came as a kind of com-
mitment to defy the imperialistic oppression (Nwagbara, 2012, 77-78). Ojaide strug-
gles for resource control and to reconstruct the homeland’s ecology. The poet needs a 
solid ground that inspires him to produce powerful poetry. By rejuvenating the African 
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ancestral heritage, Ojaide resists imperialist ideology. He envisions the past as a path that 
will save the Niger Delta from its dire present and lead to its self-recognition and pride. 
For Ojaide, the past can serve as a model to reconstruct the crumbling structures 
of the present. In “We Keep Watch Over Them” (Ojaide, 1989, 5), the poet exposes 
the annihilation of the horrendous present by employing painful and deplorable im-
ages, such as “the scaffold of pain,/ the perilous precipice misery”, “lowliness, cold and 
clammy” and “the slums of existence”. For the poet, this miserable condition must 
be defeated, because “[their] experience over the ages helps [them]”. They know the 
policy of stoicism in dealing with their persecutors. Their endurance is the outcome of 
their strong determination, which is compared to the solidity of the iroko tree, the na-
tive deep-rooted tree, and a recurrent symbol that the poet uses to show his belonging 
and to assert his native identity, “[our] will is the iroko tree rooted in our hearts.” The 
strong, collective African will to get rid of tyranny and achieve liberation becomes an 
immortal god. The imagery of fortitude and determination in the poem highlights the 
culture of resistance against persecution among the African masses, who are armed 
with an iron will: “There’s metal in our will, it shows/ when we meet hardships.”
7 An unavoidable exilic present 
The irresistible feeling of internal exile and the disastrous economic, social and politi-
cal exclusion of the masses led many Africans to choose external exile as a resource and 
liberator from the perils of homeland. In his “Home Song III” (Ojaide, 1998, 5), the 
poet observes that poverty and despair induce further movements of citizens across 
borders of the nation. Ojaide conceives a vision of his own exile as a “reluctant flight 
from persecution at home” (Oguibe, 2005, 4). Life at home is disastrous and unbear-
able, because everything is falling apart. 
The prevailing phenomenon of displacement becomes the focus of many African 
poets, including Ojaide, whose poetry articulates the “structures of exclusion against 
immigrants” along race, class, and gender lines in the First World (Olaoluwa, 2008, 
232). The African identity is marginalized in a multicultural community, such as the 
United States. Africans live in a perpetual state of “ghettoization and displacement”, and 
in order to justify this status quo the social equation of American institutions declared 
certain African-American neighbourhoods “as inherently pathological” (Hoberek, 
2005, 379). Thus to live in diaspora means to breathe the traumatic reality of discrimi-
nation and segregation embodied by the terrible double-standard policy of the Ameri-
can and western establishment. However, the postcolonial African exiles could not es-
cape the glamour of the promised wealth and ease of life in the host country. 
However, migrants’ and exiles’ utopian dreams of a good and comfortable life must 
be confronted by the host country’s constitutive “closure […] exclusion and inversion” 
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(Jamson, 2005, 3) that shackle and undermine these dreams. The utopian United States 
is the creation and projection of a media that idealizes and glorifies it. The deception of 
media and its illusive propaganda is revealed by Ojaide in “Immigrant Voice” (Ojaide, 
1998, 105). Hollywood introduces an imaginary world and fabricates the myth of the 
United States to fortify its dominative power. There is unrealistic presentation of life in 
American cities, which results in “the blurred vision of those subordinated groups of 
the Third World, who seek salvation and migration to [US and] the West” (Olaoluwa, 
2009, 188). The media provides a kind of mirage that misleads the migrants and puts 
them in perpetual confrontation with “wilderness”. However, the use of pidgin lan-
guage, a common medium of communication in the Niger Delta, shows a collective 
problem of people who are culturally and linguistically integrated under the umbrella 
of exile. The use of pidgin English formed a privilege in postcolonial Niger Delta, it 
was used to drive people to collective resistance (Okunoye, 2008, 416). However, the 
employment of this language in the poem aims at mobilizing the African masses, in 
general, and the Niger Delta people, in particular, to fight the obsession with migra-
tion and encourage them to stay at home. Ojaide thinks that pidgin English is a “comic 
medium [used] to undermine and ridicule accepted but unethical values of society” 
(Ojaide, 2009, 9). Ojaide thus defies the artificiality of exile embodied in the United 
States, which has millions of homeless people who live in squalor and misery. 
As an exile living and working in the United States, Ojaide, in his poem “A Ques-
tion of Wholeness” (Ojaide, 1998, 101), gives a description of his new exilic iden-
tity as a persecuted and disadvantaged outcast: “I am fifty percent oppressed,/ sixty 
percent robbed of rights,/ seventy percent hungry for love,/ eighty percent a dog or 
drake.” Racism is one of the lethal weapons used by Americans to show contempt and 
humiliation to ethnic groups. This racial tendency led to the genocide of the native 
Americans, and thus the poet presents himself as “ninety percent native American” to 
show the marginalization and oppression he suffers from. The poem displays the poet’s 
position in exile; he is out of place and cannot capture the wholeness of his identity as 
a human being, and hence he wonders “what percentage/ of yellow, black, or white/ I 
carry in my brown face”. 
However, despite all his sense of loss, Ojaide presents the United States as a lavish 
home in his “American Fred” (Ojaide, 1998, 102): “I will never escape Africa’s fate/ 
from my American home.” The lines show the poet’s adjustment to the new social at-
mosphere and his satisfaction with the new generous environment. His sense of mirth 
in the new world is accompanied by a remembrance of the Africans’ hardships. Exile 
appears to give Ojaide certain opportunities and a life that he would never have known 
in Nigeria. Thus he declares “how lucky I was to be American”, and prays “God bless 
America”, which shows his belonging to the new environment. Ojaide’s ambivalent 
emotions toward exile are encapsulated in the last line of the poem, when he states his 
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“gratitude for this new and bittersweet love”. However, adaptation and culture shock 
are inescapable binaries in the exile’s realm, as the poet cannot escape the paradox of 
exile when he articulates the exiles’ and immigrants’ crisis in many other poems. 
8 A comparison between Darwish and Ojaide’s poetry
Darwish and Ojaide are both engaged with the crises of their homelands in their poetry. 
Both poets have a strong feeling of belonging to the land and present exile as a monster, 
and as an exilic space of threat and seduction, whereas their homelands are idealized 
and their politicians condemned. They elevate their homelands to claim the dignities 
and identities which are denied in their adopted countries. Both poets embrace history 
as both a means and a target. They adopt the history of their lands as the basis on which 
they can form their argument and justify their existence in the past and present. This 
message is clearly expressed in Darwish’s poem “Take Care of the Stags, Father” (Dar-
wish, 2009b, 9-13) and in Ojaide’s “We Keep Watch Over Them” (Ojaide, 1989, 5).
Both poets employ language as their means of resistance. In “Mural” (Darwish, 
2009b, 102-145), Darwish uses language and poetry as raw materials for drawing an 
imaginary homeland to preserve it in the Palestinian memory. For him, poetry is an 
asylum and refuge. In his poems “Immigrant Voice” (Ojaide, 1998, 105) and “A Ques-
tion of Wholeness” (Ojaide, 1998, 101), Ojaide questions his own identity, using poet-
ry as a powerful instrument to combat corruption, racism and imperialism, but is am-
bivalent about the life enabled through exile. Darwish, on the other hand, condemns 
exile as a merciless state of torture and anguish. In his poem “The Earth is Closing on 
Us”, he depicts the Palestinians’ endless journey of exile and their agonizing homeless 
status: “Where should we go after the last frontier? Where should birds fly after the last 
sky” (qtd. in Udhari, 2005, 13). The poet conveys the most precise exilic feeling when 
the exile is astonished by his failure to find a homeland, and realizes that he is locked 
up by his enemy at the last frontier of the world that leaves no space to live on. 
While Darwish fails to find comfort in exile, Ojaide’s ambivalent attitude towards 
displacement enables him to perceive exile as home and salvation. In his poem “Safe 
Journey” (Ojaide, 1998, 81), which is dedicated to Deborah Ortega, he tells the story of 
a Nicaraguan woman who escapes the political upheavals of her country to go to exile 
in the United States. Coming from a developing country, she has great expectations 
to find comfort and relief in exile, but she and her family suffer insult, disgrace and 
humiliation when they try to enter America. Ojaide finds certain parallels between 
himself and the heroine of the poem. Both share the same space of exile and the same 
home backgrounds. They both escape disasters in their countries and seek asylum in 
the United States. Hence, unlike Darwish, who describes the feeling of great affliction 
over returning home in “The Bridge” (Darwish, 2000, 171-173), Ojaide reveals the 
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hardship of leaving home to join exile in “Safe Journey”. This is undoubtedly related 
to the nature of each poet’s vision of his homeland and exile. Darwish’s country is 
usurped, thus his return embodies the retaking of the land. The Palestinians are con-
fined by their exilic status and there is no progress in their lives. Ojaide’s homeland, on 
the other hand, suffers under the yoke of corrupt leadership, and therefore exile may 
provide the strength and self-realization whereby one can reconstruct a healthy land. 
In this context, exile can be an “enriching experience” (Said, 2000, 173). 
9 Conclusion
Poetry should move within the community like a light that clarifies a poetic vision 
and provides intellectual enlightenment. As for Darwish and Ojaide, they are confined 
between two prisons, homeland and exile. In their poetry they establish a gateway to 
freedom and create their homelands. At the same time, they try to recreate themselves 
amidst accumulations of feelings of love, connection, and commitment to their coun-
tries, as if to fight back an overwhelming sense of loss. The poets’ novel images and 
symbols shape new thoughts and visions of exile, and their visions transform their 
poetry into a kind of ideological resistance.
In the case of Darwish and Ojaide, who both address collective exiles, displace-
ment becomes an identity preservation tool. Darwish’s olive trees, Ojaide’s iroko tree 
and his people’s rituals and dances become anthems, flags, roots, and anchors. Dar-
wish and Ojaide belong to oppressed nations, which is the reason why they reluctantly 
choose exile as a means of survival. They grasp the past to resist not only their present 
physical exile, but also the inner feeling of displacement from the self. Through their 
words and visions, they search for a healing power for the wounds inflicted upon ex-
iles, immigrants, refugees, and all displaced people. 
Besides his condemnation of exile, Ojaide also presents exile as the human de-
sire for exploration, well-being and freedom. While for Darwish, exiled people are 
confined by their exilic status. There is no progress in their lives, each step leads to a 
similar one and fails to move forward. Nevertheless, the poets envision exile from a 
modern perspective as a catalyst for artistic creation. 
Darwish and Ojaide both portray the culture of the contemporary age of refu-
gees, which has left many homeless and helpless with no common ground. They fight 
through art by transforming their poetry into a distinctive voice of resistance against 
the oppressors. 
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PoeTs of exilic consciousness and rePresenTaTives of oPPressed naTions
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Ghada A  Mohammad, Wafaa A  Abdulaali
Mahmoud Darwish and Tanure Ojaide: Poets of exilic 
consciousness and representatives of oppressed nations 
Key words: exile, poet of exile, oppression, homeland, displacement, loss
Darwish, the spokesman of Palestine, and Ojaide, the voice of Nigeria, are endowed with a 
faculty for articulating a message, a vision or an opinion for their nations. They are intellectuals 
essentially tied to the needs of their communities. Both poets belong to countries that witnessed 
different types of political, economic, and social turmoil. They inspire the oppressed nations to 
persist in their struggles against the regimes which deprive them of their right to live happily 
and peacefully. 
 Darwish experienced many displacements that turned him into an embodiment of exile, 
in both existential and metaphysical terms, beyond the external, and the metaphorical, in his 
interior relations with self and poetry. His poetry of exile mirrors the socio-political atmosphere 
under the Israeli occupation. He utilizes poetry as a weapon in his fight to achieve freedom and 
independence. Similarly, Ojaide’s poetry is engaged with the crises of his homeland, the Niger 
Delta. He belongs to the generation of Nigerian writers who used their literary productions as 
a weapon against social injustice and an instrument in resisting imperialism. To him, there is a 
direct relationship between literature and social institutions. The principal function of literature 
is to criticize these institutions and eventually bring about desirable changes in society. 
 This study aims at examining Darwish and Ojaide as poets of exile by observing their 
exilic experiences and investigating certain poems that typically help dive into their external 
and internal sense of displacement. The study also highlights the concepts of home and home-
lessness. It brings to light the poets’ deep yearning for a sense of belonging and their insistence 
on regaining the motherland toward which they show a profound attachment and permanent 
commitment. They use words as a therapeutic means to compensate for the lack of a physical 
homeland. A comparison between the two poets is also provided. 
Ghada A  Mohammad, Wafaa A  Abdulaali
Mahmoud Darwish in Tanure Ojaide: pesnika občutenja 
izgnanstva in predstavnika zatiranih narodov
Ključne besede: izgnanstvo, pesnik izgnanstva, zatiranje, domovina, razseljenost, izguba 
Darwish, narodni pesnik Palestine, in Ojaide, glas Nigerije, imata sposobnost oblikovati spo-
ročilo, vizijo in mnenje za svoj narod. Oba sta intelektualca, ki se odzivata na potrebe svoje 
skupnosti. Oba izhajata iz dežel, podvrženih različnim političnim, ekonomskim in družbenim 
prevratom. Zatiranim narodom sta navdih v njihovem boju proti režimom, ki jim odrekajo 
pravico do srečnega in mirnega življenja. 
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53
Darwish je doživel mnogo selitev, ki so ga spremenile v utelešenje izgnanstva, tako eksi-
stenčnega kot metafizičnega, onkraj zunanjega in metaforičnega, v njegovem notranjem odnosu 
s samim seboj in pesništvom. Njegova poezija izgnanstva je odsevala družbeno-politično vzduš-
je pod izraelsko okupacijo. Njegova poezija je tako orožje v boju za svobodo in neodvisnost. 
Podobno se poezija, ki jo piše Ojaide, ukvarja s krizami njegove domovine, delte Nigra. Ojaide 
pripada generaciji nigerijskih pisateljev, ki so svoje književno delo pojmovali kot orožje proti 
družbeni nepravičnosti in kot način upora proti imperializmu. Zanj obstaja neposredna poveza-
va med književnostjo in družbenimi ustanovami. Iz tega pojmovanja izhaja, da sta glavni nalogi 
književnosti kritičnost do teh ustanov in podpiranje družbenih sprememb. 
Cilj tega prispevka je oba pesnika predstaviti kot pesnika izgnanstva s poudarkom na nju-
nih izkušnjah izgnanstva, in sicer na primeru pesmi, ki izražajo njun zunanji in notranji občutek 
razseljenosti. Prispevek osvetli tudi koncepte doma in brezdomstva. Pri tem se osredotoči na 
njuno globoko hrepenenje po pripadnosti in vztrajnost pri ponovnem pridobivanju domovine, 
do katere čutita globoko navezanost in zvestobo. Njune besede so terapevtsko sredstvo za pre-
moščanje praznine ob odsotnosti fizične domovine. Prispevek opozori tudi na nekatere razlike 
v njunem odnosu do izgnanstva. 
O avtoricah
Ghada A. Mohammad je doktorirala iz angleške književnosti na Univerzi v Bagdadu v Iraku. 
Je vodja Oddelka za angleščino na Open Educational College/Nineveh v Iraku in predavateljica 
na tem oddelku. 13 let je poučevala angleščino na Teacher Training Institute/Nineveh v Iraku. 
Njeno raziskovanje se osredotoča na angleško književnost in primerjalno književnost. Objavila 
je 6 znanstvenih člankov v domačih in mednarodnih revijah. 
Wafaa A. Abdulaali je profesorica na fakulteti College of Arts Univerze v Mosulu v Iraku. Po-
učevala je tudi na American University of Beirut v Libanonu in University of Ibb v Jemnu. 
Dvakrat je dobila štipendijo Univerze v Harvardu (2007–2009). Dobila je tudi štipendijo za 
mednarodne pisatelje Iowa City University. Bila je gostujoča profesorica na School of English 
Univerze v Kentu. Prevedla je tri knjige iz arabščine oziroma v arabščino. Za svoje prevajalsko 
delo je dobila nagrado ministrstva za visoko izobraževanje za najbolje prevedeno strokovno 
knjigo. Dobila je tudi štipendijo Hamad bin Jasim za islamske umetnosti in arhitekturo v Dohi, 
Katar. Je avtorica okoli 20 znanstvenih člankov v domačih in mednarodnih revijah. 
About the authors
Ghada A. Mohammad is a lecturer and Head of the Department of English at the Open Edu-
cational College/Nineveh, Iraq. She received her PhD in English literature from the University 
of Baghdad, Iraq. Her research interests include English poetry and comparative literature. She 
taught as English lecturer at the Teacher Training Institute/Nineveh, Iraq for 13 years. She has 
published six papers in local and international journals.
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Wafaa A. Abdulaali is a professor at the University of Mosul, College of Arts, Iraq. She re-
ceived her PhD in English literature from the University of Baghdad, Iraq. She taught at the 
American University of Beirut in Lebanon and the University of Ibb in Yemen. She has been 
awarded two fellowships at Harvard University (2007-2009) and an international writers fel-
lowship by Iowa City University. She was also a visiting professor at the School of English 
of the University of Kent, UK. She has translated three books from and to Arabic. She has 
received prizes for translation, such as the prize of the Ministry of Higher Education for the 
best translated reference book. She was awarded the Hamad bin Jasim Fellowship of the Arts 
and Architecture of Islam, Doha, Qatar. She has published around 20 scholarly papers in both 
domestic and international journals.      
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