Before starting to study the works of Hatif Janabi, it is necessary to consider the biography of this Iraqi creator because it greatly influenced his writings, which formed a mirror that reflects the stages of his rich and interesting life. To fully understand the details of the poet’s world, to reveal more of the secrets of his mysterious texts, and to explore the spaces of his thoughts objectively and fairly, it is crucial to look at his life paths that weave across countries and continents, peoples and cultures. It seems that Janabi’s journey in the world of creativity, which has approached fifty years and passed through not a few stations “reflects the astonishment, ramifications, and throes related to the process of creativity, its abundance and its quality” – as professor Adnan Abbas wrote.

Hatif Janabi (Hātif Maǧīd Karkūr al-Ǧanābī) – is an academic researcher, writer, poet, and well-known translator. He was born in 1952 (as a result of a mistake in some documents, it was supposed that he was born in 1951) in the town Ġammās, Al-Qādisiyya (Ad-Dīwāniyya) Governorate, Iraq. He moved with his family to Najaf at the age of eleven and settled there until the start of his studies at the Faculty of Arts in Baghdad, where he graduated in 1972.

Before beginning his work as a teacher in Kirkuk in the mid-seventies, he had to serve compulsory military service, which he spent in terrible desert conditions, his first exile in his country. Perhaps the best person to present a picture of that harsh period in Hatif’s life is his friend Kahtan Mandee (Qaḥṭān Mandawī), an Iraqi poet and academic living in America, who wrote in the introduction to his translation of Hatif Janabi’s poetry into English, remembering those hard times: