Known for his powerful revolutionary poems and scathing invectives against Arab dictators,[6] he lived in exile in many countries, including Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and Eritrea, where he stayed with the Eritrean rebels, before returning to Iraq in 2011.[2] Before he returned to Iraq, he had been essentially stateless being able to travel only on Libyan travel documents. The first complete Arabic language edition of his works was published in London in 1996 by "Dar Qanbar"[7]