Bedouin Poetry and Culture Through the Ages — with Marcel Kurpershoek and Kevin Blankinship

Marcel Kurpershoek is a former Dutch ambassador and accomplished scholar at NYU Abu Dhabi. His most recent work is “Love, Death, Fame,” a translation of poems by al-Mayidi ibn Zahir, a 17th-century poet from what is now the United Arab Emirates. In this podcast, he catches up with New Lines Magazine's Kevin Blankinship to talk about Nabati poetry, the thousand-year-old oral poetic tradition of the Arabian Peninsula. They discuss Marcel’s decades of fieldwork in Central Arabia recording oral poems among Bedouin tribes, why the ancient tradition continues to be such a central part of Khaleeji culture and identity, and how it has found a worldwide audience through the United Arab Emirates’ answer to “American Idol”: the smash-hit competitive poetry show “Million’s Poet.” Produced by Joshua Martin