Welcome to Moroccan poetry - January 2004
In the present issue we introduce three poets who represent a trend apart in Moroccan poetry. This trend is characterized by a particular focus on tradition in terms of poetic diction and syntactic structures. Since its very beginnings, modern Moroccan poetry has been concerned with the question of modernism, and this has created a certain disregard for literary tradition in general. Poets looked towards western poetic models for inspiration, and tended to maintain a minimum of attachment to Arab traditional ones, which of course had an impact on their language and style.
However, there were voices which tried as hard as possible to maintain an equilibrium between poetic modernism in vision and form on the one hand, and traditional poetic diction and structures on the other. Such an endeavor established their originality and secured them a unique place in the Moroccan poetic scene. The most representative of these poets are Ahmed Mejjati, Ahmed Joumari, and Mohamed Boudouik. The latter belongs to a younger generation than the former two who are dead, and thus he can be said to be the living heir of this trend.
Ahmed Mejjati’s charismatic presence remains very strong in the modern Moroccan poetic scene, unlike that of Joumari, whose romantic revolutionary tendencies cast a certain temporariness over his poetic experience, and thus weakened his impact on later generations. Mohamed Boudouik takes something from both. From Ahmed Mejjati he has inherited the latter’s total devotion to linguistic purity, and from Ahmed Joumari his mild poetic tampering with the political. This makes his writing a probing into the depth of culture, as he sets himself on the edge of the great contemporary debate in Morocco between traditionalism and westernization.
