[4] In 2007, Haddad created controversy when he reworked the Arabic classic Layla and Majnun, with Marcel Khalife which fundamentalists believed undermined Islamic morals.

[10] Haddad's website جهة الشعر (“Jehat”) was launched in 1996 and posted Modern Standard Arabic poetry in its original form and translated into seven languages.

[12] In 2017, he won the Aboul-Qacem Echebbi Award on its 2017 return to Tunisia after a hiatus since the Tunisian Revolution of 2011,[13] along with the third Poet Mohammed Al-Thubaiti Prize in Saudi Arabia.

[15] He completed the book طرفة بن الوردة (“The Rose of Tarafa”) during a 2008-2011 residency at the German Commission for Cultural Exchange in Berlin, followed by a 2012 Jean-Jacques Rousseau Fellowship from the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, a 2013 grant from the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Cologne, and a 2014 PEN Centre Germany in Munich.

The first consists of his first three collections: البشارة (“Portents,” 1970), خروج رأس الحسين من المدن الخائنة (“The Exodus of Ras Al-Husayn from the Treacherous Cities,” 1972), and الدم الثاني (“The Second Blood,” 1975).

The allusions are often to mythic figures such as Sisyphus, Scheherezade, Penelope, and Antarah ibn Shaddad, as well as to modern colonial resistance symbols such as Che Guevara, Vietnam, and Palestine.

These works include الجواشن (“Armour”), a long-form work co-written by novelist Amin Saleh; the aforementioned أخبارمجنون ليلى (“Majnun Laila,” painted by Iraqi artist Dia Azzawi and set to music by Marcel Khalife); جوه مع (“Faces”) with Bahraini painter Ebrahim Busaad, singer-songwriter Khaled El Sheikh, the poet Adunis, and the playwright Abdullah Youssef.