Boise State extends Al-Mutanabbi Street exhibition

The collection reflects on a bombing on the famous Iraqi street that killed 30 people and injured 100. 
The collection reflects on a bombing on the famous Iraqi street that killed 30 people and injured 100. 

An exhibition at Boise State University commemorating the 2007 bombing of Baghdad's "street of the booksellers" has been extended.

"Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here" is a collection of poetry, artists’ books, broadsides, and prints that reflect on the famous street and the car bomb attack that killed 30 people and injured 100. 

The collection, which opened at Boise State on Oct. 2, is an extension of a 2012 anthology published by Beau Beausoleil and Deema Shebabi who gathered literary responses to the attack's violence and its symbolic attack on ideas.

Al-Mutanabbi street has a long history of being a hub for publishers, writers, cafes, and booksellers and takes its name from a 10th-century classical Arab poet.

The exhibit at Boise State now will run through March 5, the ninth anniversary of the bombing. Boise State will co-host a closing ceremony with the Idaho Book Arts Guild and the Idaho Center for the Book that will include a concurrent reading with other poets, writers, and artists around the world in London, San Francisco, Cairo, Rome, Paris and other cities. Boise teacher Debra Smith will moderate the event.