David Naimon
speaker
4,074 appearances
10 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 24 Aug
David Naimon’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 10 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 3.
Appearances
Also whether one grew up in a culturally Kurdish household or whether one sought out Kurdish community for the first time by moving for a while to Kurdistan to work or teach or study.
podcast-host
Also differences in religion and religious observance.
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And very much of course differences in demeanor and style and delivery.
podcast-host
So I was wondering if you would share what it's been like for you, what if any surprises have come out of it, like how it's been versus how you imagined it and or what you're planning as a collective.
podcast-host
Yeah.
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Well, before we hear some more questions from others, I want to ask you another question about Kurdish community and belonging.
podcast-host
The final lines you read from your essay.
podcast-host
Which isn't the end of the essay, but the final lines of the part that you read of the essay has you quoting the the Kurdish line, No friends but the mountains, and how you, when you hear this phrase, can't help but feel that it sounds like you don't even have yourselves as friends, fellow Kurds.
podcast-host
Your chapbook, What I Know of the Mountains, I presume, is named in relation, perhaps.
podcast-host
Perhaps to this phrase.
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But the essay continues from there, where you learn from another Kurdish person that the origin of this phrase is actually from a historical book written by two white guys in 1992.
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Uh
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So the forsakenness that Bekas expressed in the poem that we opened with, where Kurds can get no answer or help from God because they aren't speaking.
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speaking Arabic seems to extend even here to the false origins of this supposedly Kurdish phrase that is meant to capture something essential about Kurdishness.
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But who knows, may maybe it's not Kurdish at all.
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It just made me wonder
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given how mountains do loom large in the Kurdish consciousness, regardless of and independently of this quote, like I think of the line by Salim Barakat that you quote in one of your lectures,
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To cross the mountains is to cross through words the poets have forgotten
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It made me wonder both about writing these mountains and these rock specific poems, having never been to the mountains when you're writing some of them, and then experiencing mountains for the first time in in grad school in Virginia.
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And similarly, if you've ever, like Tracy, wanted to seek out a more fully Kurdish experience, not necessarily in Kurdistan, like she did, but even let's say in Nashville or in Dallas, where one could do so in some way within the diaspora.
podcast-host
Showing 261–280 of 4,074 · page 14 of 204
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