KUWAIT: Ali Al-Masoudi stands in front of the Mubarak Kiosk.

KUWAIT: Writer and poet Ali Al-Masoudi presented a TV program named ‘Poetry in Mubarak Kiosk’. The program, aired on Kuwait TV, presents Kuwait’s history and the events it experienced through poetry, while focusing on one certain period and one more precise place.

The time period is the era of Mubarak the Great who founded the modern State of Kuwait during his reign which lasted from 1896 until 1915. Many conflicts, alliances, challenges, social changes, economics and politics marked this period, while Kuwait went through several wars and important battles where poems had an important say.

The place is the Mubarak Kiosk that Sheikh Mubarak the Great, the ‘Peninsula Lion,’ used as a meeting place in which he received delegations and discussed the country’s affairs. The kiosk also hosted literal, cultural and intellectual sessions during which he received writers and poets and listened to their pieces either in local dialect or classical Arabic.

Poetry was in the forefront of the cultural scene at that time with encouragement from Sheikh Mubarak as he used it as a media platform during his wars either to silence, intimidate or answer adversaries. His presence in trips and sessions encouraged the documentation of history.