Melville House Books

“Saudi poet Aydah Al Aarawi Al Jahani is being embraced as a hero by women and poets alike not only in the Arab world but further afield because she refuses to quit the highly popular Abu Dhabi TV show ‘The Million’s Poet’ despite pressure from her family and tribe,” says Bryan Pearson in a report for Variety. “Although members of her family want her to quit, her husband has become a staunch supporter and is seen in the audience while she, dressed in all-covering black abayah, reads her poetry.”

The show — a reality show similar to American Idol that presents poets competing before a panel of judges (all of whom are men) — offers a grand prize of 5 million dirhams ($1.3 million). No woman has ever won it before, but Al Jahani has advanced through three rounds, and her “theme of the struggle of women to be recognized as poets in a male-dominated Arab world has found resonance with the millions of viewers tuning into the weekly show,” according to the Variety report.

Al Jahani, meanwhile, says she’s not as worried of the backlash as of something else: “I am very proud to be the first female poet to make it to this stage of the competition; I am now just afraid of losing.”

You can see her most recent performance in the video below (which we first saw on BookNinja). As to what she’s saying, a commentator on YouTube translates it as:

I have seen evil from the eyes of the subversive fatwas in a time when what is lawful is confused with what is not lawful;

When I unveil the truth, a monster appears from his hiding place; barbaric in thinking and action, angry and blind; wearing death as a dress and covering it with a belt [referring to suicide bombing];

He speaks from an official, powerful platform, terrorizing people and preying on everyone seeking peace…

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.