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Maxamed Xaashi Dhamac ‘Gaarriye’ (1949–2012) is regarded as one of the most important Somali poets of the twentieth century. He composed on a wide variety of topics, from nuclear weapons to the nature of poetry. He was the initiator of the Deelley, a very famous 'chain' of poems by leading Somali poets in the 1970s and 1980s that were critical of the regime of Siad Barre. The book brings together some of his most beloved work and features the never previously translated poem ‘Watergate’, a coruscating indictment of global political corruption that seems all the more relevant today. Includes and afterword by Clare Pollard.

Maxamed Xaashi Dhamac 'Gaarriye' was born in Hargeysa in 1949 where he continued to live until illness forced him to leave for Norway in 2011. Gaarriye died in Oslo on 30th September, 2012.Gaarriye attended school in Sheikh in Somaliland and then graduated with a degree in biology from the Somali National University, following which he worked as a teacher for several years. As a keen poet and literary scholar also he later worked at the Academy of Culture in Mogadishu and then as a lecturer in Somali literature at National University.Since the 1970s Gaarriye was universally regarded as one of the most important Somali poets composing on a great variety of topics from nuclear weapons to Nelson Mandela. A poet who was never afraid to engage in the politics of Somalia through his poetry, he was the initiator of one of the largest 'chain poems''Deelley' to which many poets contributed, each one alliterating in 'd' - hence the name of the chain.In addition to his poetry, Gaarriye was the person who first articulated the metrical patterns of Somali poetry, which he published in 1976 in a number of articles in the national newspaper of the time. This work was invaluable and a major intellectual achievement.Martin Orwin was born in 1963. He studied Arabic and Amharic as an undergraduate at SOAS and he then went on to obtain a PhD in the phonology of Somali.Currently Senior Lecturer in Somali and Amharic at SOAS, he has taught there since 1992.W.N. Herbert was born in 1961 in Dundee, and educated there and at Brasenose College, Oxford. He is Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing at Newcastle University, and has published widely with OUP, Arc, and others, including six books of poetry with Bloodaxe, several collaborative volumes with other poets, and five pamphlets. He has edited best-selling and influential anthologies such as Strong Words (2000) and Jade Ladder (2012). He is also a librettist, a text-led public artist, and a translator, working in collaboration on texts in Bulgarian, Chinese, Dutch, Farsi, and Somali. He has been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize, the Forward, and the Saltire, and has gained several PBS Recommendations and other awards, including the Cholmondeley. He was an original New Generation Poet, the first Wordsworth Trust Writing Fellow, and, between 2015 and 2018, the first Dundee Makar or city laureate. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

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