Poet
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Jalal Hakmaoui 1965-... country: Morocco language: Arabic |
was born in Casablanca and is a leading representative of the new generation of poets in Morocco. He made his debut in 1997. He is founder and editor of the review Israf. The Moroccan poet Jalal El-Hakmaoui was born in Casablanca in 1965. He studied French and translation theory and now lives and works in Rabat, where he teaches translation theory. El-Hakmaoui is a poet and a translator. His own translation work mainly concerns poetry (Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Edmond Jabès, Ana Luísa Amaral, Nino Judice, Donatella Bisutti, Claudio Pozzani, Abdel-Ilah Salhi, and others). He currently works on an Arabic anthology of French-language poetry from Belgium and one of modern Dutch poetry. He also compiles anthologies of Moroccan poetry in French. For the Moroccan Writers’ Union he handles international relations. In 1997 he published a poetry collection, Shahâdat ‘Uzûba (Certificate of Celibacy). El-Hakmaoui’s poems contain striking combinations of disparate elements. For instance, the Arabic text is occasionally enlivened with French words and the usual suspects of Western culture, Don Juan and Botticelli, are made to feature in the same poem with such Arab writers as Manfaluti and Nazik al-Malaika. The dreamy eyes of a little shepherdess with an Oriental smile are about as distant from the world as the sixtieth floor of a skyscraper mentioned a little later. Whereas quite a few names are bandied about in the longer poems, for this festival El-Hakmaoui has included some epigrammes in which no names are dropped whatsoever. They do confirm, however, that El-Hakmaoui is a versatile poet. Author: Willem Stoetzer Translated by Ko Kooman Poets: |
