Shehab Ganem, first Arab to win Tagore Award, to be honoured
Emirati will become the first Arab recipient of award instituted in memory of Tagore
Dubai: Emirati poet Shehab Ganem, the first Arab to receive the Tagore Peace Prize, will collect his award next month in Kolkata, India.
Ganem, considered a leading poet and the foremost translator of Indian poetry into Arabic, said he is honoured to receive the Tagore Peace Prize, instituted by the Indian government to commemorate the 150th birth anniversary of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.
Ganem will receive the prize for his achievements in the field of poetry and its translation and for using his work as a tool to spread peace and love.
Distinguished figures
The award honours one person every two years and has previously honoured distinguished figures and Nobel Laureates including Nelson Mandela, Megawati Sukarnoputri, Daisaku Ikeda, Amartya Sen.
“I am honoured to be chosen by the prize committee as the first Arab to receive this prestigious prize which carries the name of a great poet like Tagore. I am extremely excited for the award ceremony and to meet distinguished people,” said Ganem. Although Ganem fell in love with poetry at a very young age, he did not study literature in university.
“I fell in love with poetry when I was in primary school and attempted to write when I was in secondary school. However my first mature poems were as an undergraduate. In university I studied both mechanical and electrical engineering at Aberdeen University in Scotland. I then completed my masters degree in Water Resources Engineering at Roorkee University and a PhD in econ-omics at Cardiff University, Wales.”
Ganem has published 50 books all related to poetry except three, the Industrialisation in the United Arab Emirates, The Eternal Miracle, and From the Lamps of Wisdom.
Twenty books are translations of poetry. “The rest of my books are in prose while some are biographies” about poets including Ganem’s late father and late uncle Ali Luqman.
“My latest book is called In the Valley of Muses, where I translated 75 of my Arabic poems to English. It encompasses many themes such as love, family, meditation, spiritual, patriotism, etc. The book has just been released by the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Community Development.”
As for his future plans, Ganem told Gulf News that he has been working on a dictionary of English proverbs with Arabic equivalents for the past 10 years and it is nearly finished. “I am also working with my son Waddah, a PhD researcher on a book on Al Fatihah, the opening of the Quran in English. I am also working on translating other poetry books” he added.
