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Mohammed Al-Asaad

Personal Info

  • Country of residence: Iraq
  • Gender: Male
  • Born in: 1944
  • Age: 78
  • Curriculum vitae :

Information

Muhammad Al-Asaad (1944 - 2021) was a Palestinian poet and critic. He was born in the village of Umm Al-Zeinat, located near the city of Haifa in Palestine. His family migrated in 1948 to settle in the city of Basra in Iraq, where the poet received his early education, and despite the difficult financial circumstances that befell his family, Al-Assaad was able to complete his education and traveled to Kuwait where he worked in the press there. He lived for a while in Cyprus after the Gulf War, then in Bulgaria and then returned to Kuwait, where he lives now. Muhammad Al-Asaad's poetry is complete with sensual images and emotion, reflecting his immersion in the collective themes of the Palestinians living in the diaspora. In addition to his critical books (An Article in the Poetic Language) (1980), (Palestine Plastic Art) (1985) and (In Search of Modernity) (1986), Al-Assaad published a number of poetry collections (Singing in Deep Vaults) (1974), and (I Tried Your drawing is in the body of the sea) (1976), and (To your coast now come the birds), (1980). The poet also published his autobiography in a book entitled (Children of the Dew), (London 1991 AD).

 

beginning of poetry

Al-Assaad’s style was distinguished by its precision and liveliness since its inception. Perhaps the best indication of this distinction is that since the release of his first group, “Singing in Deep Cellars,” it was noted that he was one of the young Arab voices who remained loyal to the poetic heritage of the fifties at the time when they stood before another beginning. It is a rare case referred to by the Iraqi critic and poet Dr. Ali Jaafar Al-Alaq in an article titled "A Return to the Atmosphere of the Pentecostal Poem" in which he analyzed the poet's first collection. Among what was stated in this article is that the poet Al-Assaad “much that reminds you of the Pentecostal poem; On the one hand, and what it achieved, at the hands of Adonis, for example, of a qualitative leap in the Arabic poem: complexity, employment of dream, polyphony, renewal of language” (2). Al-Allaq tended to believe that the Palestinian poet Muhammad Al-Asaad “constitutes an unstable state, or in more correct terms, a state of standing between two feelings, between two convictions, it represents a fiftieth conviction, and the beginning of another (3). The first, until it received special attention from a number of critics, who saw in it a special, unique voice and great artistic integration, as the poet Dr. Salma Al-Khadra Al-Jayousi expressed in her comment on his poems translated into English when she wrote: “Muhammad Al-Asaad completely avoided the traps and temptations of the poetic style common, and remained loyal to a form of expression possessing a high degree of self-discipline. He is a poet with great artistic integrity, and a poetic instinct that does not know how to falter, which enabled him to maintain his own transparent vision during the turbulent seventies, and to keep the linguistic and figurative boundaries firmly closed in the face of jargon and false adventurism. His poetry, imprinted with subtle sobriety stamps and a language as natural as its novelty, vividly bears witness to the way in which art works with the creative instinct of a few individuals. The field of art is limited to some poets, and its limits can be recognized instinctively, but it is also a very fragile field, and its integrity can be violated, as we have always seen, if the poet shows what indicates a response to the loud call of social-political commitment, and here we must hasten to say that there is no poet More committed than Assaad; The nature of his sensitivity itself stems from the reality of permanent exile, and from the continuous injustice, and from the detraction of the latents contained in his Palestinian nationality. However, his poetic work at the same time is an outstanding evidence that the poetic technique does not derive from the themes of the subject of poetic preoccupation necessarily, but rather stems from the poet’s artistic composition and status And from the extent to which the poet's sensitivity resists the bargains of the times that impersonate or submit to the characteristics of artistic attractiveness. With his pure sobriety and artistic reservations, Al-Assaad completely rejected all the "legitimate" social expectations of the stage, and continued to develop his art (4).

 

his life

Under the title "The Magic of Writing," the poet Muhammad Al-Asaad published glimpses of his autobiography in 2009, which included the most important stations in his life in an innovative artistic style (5). The most important information obtained from this biography is that he was born in the village of Umm al-Zeinat, which is located on the southern slope of the Palestinian Mount Carmel overlooking the Haifa coast, on August 6, 1944. When he was four years old, his village was attacked by a heavily armed force of the Zionist Haganah gang at night, and the village was occupied after Desperately defended by the villagers, everyone who insisted on staying was killed. The remaining residents of the village were displaced on the rugged paths to the nearby village of "Daliyat al-Karmel", but the Zionist gangs chased them there and forced them to flee on foot to Jenin. There, the young poet slept with his family on the land of one of the orchards, and they lived in the open, before the Iraqi army withdrawing from Jenin offered the refugees from the Carmel villages to take them to Iraq. In Baghdad, the Palestinian refugees were placed in Jewish schools, which they later called “the Torah” (6) and then they were distributed. Some of them remained in Baghdad, and some were transferred to the city of Mosul in the north, and another to the city of Basra in the south. The poet's family was among the families that were transferred to Basra, where they were placed under heavy guard in an abandoned British army camp in the desert south of Basra called Al-Shuaiba Camp. After two years, the Palestinian families were transferred to housing in the city of Basra itself, similar to the housing they had resided in in Baghdad, and it was the property of the Jews who had been emigrated by the Iraqi government to occupied Palestine (7). In Basra, the poet completed his education until high school, then joined the University of Baghdad in the College of Commerce and Economics (1962) and also joined the Institute of Fine Arts under the supervision of the great Iraqi painter Ismail al-Sheikhly. During his studies at the University of Baghdad, the poet began publishing his poems in the "Al-Aqlam" magazine.

his books (28)

poetic works

Singing in Deep Cellars (First Edition), Diwan Series of Modern Arabic Poetry, Iraqi Ministry of Information, Baghdad, 1974

I Tried to Draw You in the Body of the Sea (First Edition), Dar Al-Talia, Kuwait, 1976

To your coast, now the birds come (first edition), Dar Ibn Rushd, Beirut, 1980

The Kingdom of Proverbs (first edition), Dar Al-Awda, Beirut, 1986

Poetic Works, Part One (8 Collections), The Book of Poetic Mirrors, El-Mahalla El-Kobra, Egypt, 2009

cash business

An article in poetic language, The Arab Institute for Studies and Publishing, Beirut, 1980

Palestinian Plastic Art, Dar Al-Hiwar, Damascus, 1985

In Search of Modernity, Arab Research Institute, Beirut, 1986

Fictional works

Children of the dew, Riyadh Al Rayes House, London, 1990

The Refugee's Text, New Ages Magazine, Cairo, December 1999

Gardens of the Lover, House of New Ages, Cairo, 2001

The Tree of Delights: The Secret Biography of Ibn Fadlan, The Arab Institute for Studies and Publishing, Beirut, 2004

Voices of Silence, Masaa and the Arab House of Science - Kuwait and Beirut, 2009

Narrative works (Children of the Dew, The Refugee’s Text, The Lover’s Gardens, The Tree of Delights, The Voices of Silence, Umm Al-Zeenat under the Carob Trees - in three volumes) Al-Bayt Association for Culture and Arts, Al-Bayt Publications, Algeria, 2009

Children of the Dew (in French), Alpen Michel House, Paris, 2002

Children of the Dew (in Greek), Alexandria House, Athens, 2003

Children of the Dew (in Portuguese), Campo daz Letras, Lisbon, 2005

Children of the Dew (Hebrew), Dar Bardis, Haifa, 2005

Curriculum Vitae

Beyond Walls: Muhammad Al-Asaad and Youssef Al-Ghazi: Palestinian and Israeli Refugees Revisit Their History (French), Edited by Françoise Germain, Act Sud & Sinbad, Paris, 2005

Research

Orientalists in Archeology: How They Read Tablets and Write History, Masaa & Arab House of Science, Kuwait & Beirut, 2010

Translations

After the Fall (play), Arthur Miller, The National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters, World Theater, Kuwait, February 1998

One by one Plum blossoms bloom: a study in the aesthetics of the haiku poem with selected evidence, Kenneth Yasuda, National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters, International Creations, Kuwait, 1999

Six Commandments for the Next Millennium (Lectures), Italo Calvino, National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters, International Creations, Kuwait, December 1999

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Achievements and Awards

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