Hadaa Sendoo

Hadaa Sendoo
Born	(1961-10-24) 24 October 1961 Southern Mongolian, today's Inner Mongolia in the territory of China
Occupation	Poet, Critic, essayist, Translator
Period	September 24, 2011– present
Literary movement	Early 21st century , Medellin, the World Poetry Movement (WPM)

Hadaa Sendoo (Template:Lang-mn; born 24 October 1961) is an award-winning Mongolian poet and translator. He is founder and leading figure of the World Poetry Almanac[22]. His poems, which have been translated into more than 30 languages, have been included in The Best Mongolian Poetry[23]. In 2006, he established the critically acclaimed World Poetry Almanac. His early poetry is strongly influenced by the Mongolian epic and influenced by Russian imagist poetry and Italian hermetic poetry of the 20th Century. Hadaa Sendoo is considered one of the great poets in the 21st century by critics. He is currently a consulting editor of the International Literary Quarterly*[24].

Roots

Hadaa Sendoo was born in 1961 in Southern Mongolia, today's Inner Mongolia,and grew up in Shiiliigool. His father was the head of a theatre and his mother was a drama actor. Sendoo has lived in Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia, since 1991.

Early years

When Hadaa Sendoo was very young, his father moved his family to Southern Mongolia, near the Dalan Har Mountains, where Hadaa spent his childhood. He studied old Mongolian and also Chinese at the local high school, but tired of the school curriculum, he later returned to the steppe for a nomadic life until 1984, when his father recommended that he should enter an art institute, where he soon served as an editorial assistant. The young Hadaa has had the opportunity to read a lot of Mongolian literature - certainly the classics, and thus epics, including the Jangar, Books of Mongolian Folk Songs, and also Modernist Poetry (Shuleg). In 1989, he published his first collection of poems The Nomadic Songs and Moonlight. In 1991, he moved to Northern Mongolia and ever since has lived in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, where he teaches at the university as a professor of literature, and is doing research in Mongolian folk literature, including folk songs, and in Mongolian mythology. In 1996, Hadaa Sendoo published his first collection of poems written in Cyrillic new Mongolian. In 1998, he formally joined the Mongolian Writers Union. In 1999, Hadaa and his friends co-founded a cultural magazine called The World's Mongolians (a Mongolian - English bilingual edition) that is published in Mongolia. In the summer of the same year, Hadaa and his bosom friend S. Tserendorj, who is also a Mongolian poet, organized the first Asian Poetry Festival in Ulaanbaatar. Hadaa has won the Athens City Hall Prize and the 2nd Olympics of Culture Prize (Athens,1999). He continue to teach at the National University of Mongolia.

On the way to poetry

In his middle age, Hadaa Sendoo wrote many poems, and his poetic style was very different from that of the past. The poet believes that poetry has a hidden and strange power that could go through time and death. In 2007, he went to the Mongol Yuan Empire's Shangdu, the capital created by Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan, who established it in middle of the 13th century. And soon after that visit, Hadaa wrote a very strong long poem work entitled ShangDu Sad Song, and another one, titled Shandu Dream Song.

On the road leading to poetry, perhaps a profound turning point occurred in 2009. At the time, his book of poetry Come Back to Earth attracted the attention of several critics. Some of his poems have included in the Top 500 Poems [25]. Hadaa Sendoo’s a famous poem, The Wind has selected in the end of the movie, Until There – A Mongolian tale[26] the film has won International Tourism Film Festival and Young Director Award Cannes in 2016.

Hadaa Sendoo received many poetry awards, including the Mongolian Writers' Union Prize. He also received a Medal of Honour for literary achievement in Mongolia, Greece, Canada, and the USA. He was invited to attend International Poetry festivals in Europe, Asia, North America, and Latin America. And his book of poetry Come Back to Earth has won the Best Book of Poetry award by the International Writers Association. In 2008, Hadaa was elected a full Member of the Mongolian Academy of the Humanities. He has published over 10 collections of poems. Some of his poems have been translated into Greek, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Hebrew, Russian, Georgian,Turkish, Lithuanian,and Persian. Hadaa Sendoo is considered a great poet of the 21st Century and one of the most valuable poets of the world by some critics.

On September 24, 2011, Hadaa joined the World Poetry Movement and thus became one of its earliest member who were founding the World Poetry Movement.

In 2012, Hadaa Sendoo was invited to the largest poetry festival ever staged in the UK, the Southbank Centre's Poetry Parnassus, where he read his poetry and discussed his work as part of the festival. His latest collection of poems was displayed as part of the exhibition in the outdoor spaces around the Royal Festival Hall and the Queen Elizabeth Hall. One of his poems was printed on bookmarks for the "Rain of Poems", and thus was among the poems dropped from a helicopter over London. His poems have appeared in the World Record Anthology [27] by Bloodaxe. And also in an Anthology of Present Day Best Poems of 60 representative poets around the globe.

Poets talking about poetry of Hadaa Sendoo

Famous poet and Cambridge University Professor Richard Berengarten wrote about one of Hadaa Sendoo's works: "I have read this book through carefully. More important, I was delighted to discover the depth and breadth of his great vision. This impression of mine was strengthened when I read the last prose text on the "Poet of the 21st century" in the bool Come Back to Earth, and his poem "The Wind". Both these texts connect with my concept of the "universalist poet" and "universalist poetry". The theme of the wind (air, breath, spirit) is a very profound one. The poems in Come Back to Earth gave me a sense of the wide spaces of Mongolia and also made me sad for the culture that has been lost. They reminded me of the fine movies The Cave of the Yellow Dog and Story of the Weeping Camel. "

Delhi University Professor Rita Malhotra said in one of her academic papers entitled The Rapturous World of Words:"Hadaa Sendoo's poetic oeuvre is not merely an artistic and aesthetic manifestation of his sensibilities but also expresses human concerns and moral consciousness in response to his immediate surroundings. He depicts a passionately lived connection to the natural world and also accesses the latent world beyond the obvious in true fidelity to poetic sensitivity. The sensitive and thought-provoking themes are intensely varied. Hadaa's consummate artistry and use of vivid images can be seen even in his expression of disillusionment...".

Germany's Andreas Weiland, a poet and art critic, said: "Hadaa Sendoo's poetry echoes his life, nature, the wide land, the wind of Mongolia. I try to listen to the rhythm. I pay attention to the poetic quality of each line. I think that lines in his poetry like "resigned to another death" or "glad to die another death" both refer to reincarnation. We die so many deaths, because we are reborn, according to Shamanist and Buddhist (and other) beliefs. His poems touch my heart and evoke thoughts and strong emotions, intense images. I think highly of Hadaa Sendoo as a sensitive and real poet".

University of Cambridge critic Dr. Antonio Cuadrado–Fernandez talked about Hadaa Sendoo's poetry at the 1st International Symposium "Re-founding Democracy" in Barcelona. In his research paper he aims to use a phenomenological approach to the Indigenous poetry of Hadaa Sendoo: "The poetry of Hadaa Sendoo takes the reader to the plains of Mongolia, to the smoke of the yurt, to wandering camels, to nights filled with stars traversed by nomadic families. This is an ancient life-style threatened by the prospect of the mining boom of Mongolia's earthly fortunes. Sendoo's poetry is an elegant yet powerful vindication of his communal worldviews rooted in nomadism and in his poem "The ruins and reflection" he also recurs to metamorphosis to conceptualise the steppe as a human body, which serves as a metaphor to project the resilient ecology of the steppes: Have you died? You seem like a dry sea / But you are the fleshing steppe / From your peaceful eyes / I know you have already forgot / Kublai Khan's sadness / And Togoontumur Khan's shame / You are only but sunk in sleep on the land / Your hair is bits of tiles / Your body is rocks / You are the troubled sea / This poem is a good example of how humans perceive the world through the body used as a reference, like much cognitive theory suggests today, and that landscapes embody emotions and memories derived from personal and interpersonal experience. As cultural geographer Christopher Tilley suggests, "Knowledge and metaphorical understanding of landscape is intimately bound up with the experience of the human body in place, and in movement between places. The significance of places in the landscapes is continually being woven into the fabric of social life, and anchored to the topographies of the landscape". Thus, if we read this blend as the interrelation of the sensuous ingredients of both body and the geography of the steppes, the perceived effect is one of pleasurable affinity between humans and land, but also resilience and strength. The separation between body and environment seems to disappear as the distinction between body and land is difficult to discern. In other words, self and environment merge into a hybrid entity where body and environment are cognitively and sensuously connected. To sum up, if the earth is conceived as tissue-clothing, the earth is seen as a potentially flexible entity to which the indigenous body is fully adapted because both the body and the earth are perceived as having the same shape. If readers know that a nomadic way of life requires a perceptual attuning to the shapes of the physical world, it is easier for them to understand the conceptualization of earth as a body. But there is also another interesting aspect in the poem, the auditory space that readers enter through the interpellatory "Have you died", which is used to address the steppe as a humanized entity. As readers enter this space, they may wish to elaborate its acousticity, the sonority of the poet's voice addressing the steppes in the open air, its resonance in the sky as the wind blows... This poetic technique asserts Indigenous land as a unique entity replete with cultural meaning, against marketing and commodifying criteria that strips off its centuries old significance"."

Paul Scott Derrick, an American literary critic, said in one of his reviews A NOMAD SOUL IN TIME：“Hadaa Sendoo’s poetry shows us the ghosts (he calls them shadows) of the future. He stabs his pen into the darkness ahead to lament and celebrate both his own vanishing life and a vanishing culture that can only be caught in words. His is a nomad soul, riding on horseback across the expanse of time”.

Influence exerted

Hadaa Sendoo's influence has also been demonstrated both in international contexts and in the immediate geographical area of the Mongolian cultural sphere. In the 21st century, some critics of Hadaa Sendoo's poetry have given rather positive assessments, claiming that he has to be regarded as one of top poets and even one of the most influential poets in the 21st century. Thus Japan's Meiji University Professor Ban’ya Natsuishi called Hadaa Sendoo "one of the best poets writing in today's world". Peruvian poet Carlos H. Garrido Chalen wrote to all members of the Writers Union in Latin America: "Hadaa Sendoo is a world-renowned leading figure poet". In 2002, Hadaa Sendoo was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Literature by the World Academy of Arts and Culture (California). In 2003, India's well-known scholar Professor Syed Amiruddin wrote: "Hadaa Sendoo is a multidimensional creative genius, besides being one of the world's leading reflective thinkers, a humanist and a most illustrious poet. He is known for his humanistic values. His philosophy embracing world peace, love for all creation and appreciation of beauty in nature should be intensely highlighted and exposed to the wider world audience in a fitting manner." Hadaa Sendoo was recognized as an Accomplished Leader of Influence by the American Biographical Institute in 2010. He was invited to the influential International Poetry Festival of Medellin as a guest, and also to the 2011 Tokyo Poetry Festival. In 2012, he took part in the UK's largest ever poetry festival Poetry Parnassus [28].

A far-reaching poetry event occurred in October 2006 when a groundbreaking and unprecedented international poetry yearbook appeared in Central Asia; founder Hadaa Sendoo deserved to become the leading figure of this World Poetry Almanac published in Mongolia [29].

In 2016, Hadaa Sendoo published his collection of poems Sweet Smell of Grass (بوی شیرین چمن)[30] in Persian, causing great attention. This collection of poems has been featured and discussed in the internationally renowned Tehran International Book Fair.

In 2017, as a poet from Asia, Hadaa Sendoo received the award at the Festival DOOS-2017 for "The Manifesto of the five continents”, in Moscow, Russia.

Awards

• The Poet of the Millennium Award (India,2000);
• The Mongolian Writers Union Prize (Mongolia,2009);
• The Pinnacle of Achievement Award for poetry (USA,2011)
• Nosside Prize for poetry (Italy,2014)
• Visionary Poet Award (Canada,2015)

Works

• Poetry: The Nomadic Songs and Moonlight (Chinese 1989);
• Rock Song (Mongolian 1996);
• The Steppe (Mongolian 2005);
• Come Back to Earth (English 2009);
• Come Back to Earth (回歸大地 Hui gui da di, Taipei 2010);
• Yurt (Georgian, Tbilisi, 2010);
• The Road Is Not Completed (Mongolian, 2011)
• Sweet Smell of Grass (بوی شیرین چمن Persian, Tehran, 2016)

External links

• Hadaa Sendoo Official website at The International Literary Quarterly
• Original Mongolian poems in English from The Center for Central Asian Literatures in Translation, US
• Poems in Mongolian-EnglishStreet Voice issue:Spring 2015 (A non-commercial, multi-lingual literary journal based in Europe).
• Mongolian poem in Mongolian cyrillic scriptl at Poetic Souls
• PROMETEO Número 86-87. Julio de 2010 Poems in Spanish
• The Chinese Southern Art Poems in Chinese
• 翻訳詩のコーナー Poems in Japanese
• Poeta Hadaa Sendoo,Pro Esia,3 de janeiro de 2013 Poem in Portuguese
• Centrul Cultural Pitesti 2007 poem in Romanian
• Magazine Art et Poésie De Touraine -№ 194-Automne 2008 Poem in French
• "Il Foglio volante" di novembre,2009 Poems in Italian
• itü sözlük inanna salome 11.02.2013 Poems in Turkish
• Edisi Sabtu, 30 April 2011 Poems in Indonesian
• Хадаа Сендоо,ПОэтов 2011 Poems in Russian