Mohammed Bennis

Mohammed Bennis is a Moroccan poet and one of the most important poets of the Modern Arabic Poetry. He was born in Fez, Morocco , in 1948 . He contributes energetically to the modern Arabic poetry and he enjoys since the seventies , a particular status in the Arab culture. Muhsin J. al-Musawi writes about him: “The Moroccan poet Muhammad Bennis’ articulations tend to validate his poetics in the first place, to encapsulate the overlapping and contestation of genres in a dialectic that takes into account power politics whose tropes are special. As a discursive threshold between Arab East and the Moroccan West, tradition and modernity, and also a site of contestation and configuration, Muhammad Bennis Self-justifications may reveal another poetic predilection, too.”.^[1]

Biography

Bennis first attended Koranic School, and he attended the public primary school in 1958, at the age of ten. From an early age, he is interested in literature, particularly lyric poetry. He pursued his university studies in literature at the Faculty of Letters and Human sciences-Dhar Mehraz, Fez, where he obtained, in 1972, the Bachelor of Art degree in Arabic Literature. At the Faculty of Letters and Human sciences of Rabat, Mohammed V-Agdal University, Bennis supported, in 1978, his thesis of PhD supervised by Abdelkébir Khatibi on the “Phenomenon of Contemporary poetry in Morocco”. And, at the same Faculty, he defended, in 1988, a doctoral thesis, supervised by Jamel-Eddine Bencheikh, on “Modern Arabic poetry, structures and mutations”. Bennis published his first poems in 1968 in Al Alam Newspaper in Rabat. In 1969, he sent his poems to the poet Adonis who then published them in n°9 of the review Mawakif. Ma Qabla al Kalam; (Before Words), Bennis’ first collection of poems was published in 1969. He settled in 1972, in Mohammedia, where he begun teaching Arabic language. Since 1980, he has been professor of Modern Arabic Poetry at the Faculty of Letters and Human sciences of Rabat, Mohammed V-Agdal University.

Works

Author of around thirty titles (poetry, prose, essay, and translation, among them, thirteen poetry collections, the poetic works (2 volumes), studies on Moroccan poetry and Modern Arabic poetry), Bennis published in numerous newspapers and reviews all over the Arab World. Some of his poems and texts have been translated and published in collective works, reviews and newspapers in Europe, the United States and in Japan. From 1995, poetry collections and books of him have been translated and published into French, Spanish, Italian, Turkish and Macedonian. He writes on painting. Some of his works are realized, by painters, in the form of books and folio volumes, in Morocco, Europe, the United States and in Japan. Kitab al-Hobb (The Book of Love), which was realized in 1994 with the Iraqi painter Dia Azzawi,^[2] is the testimony of a common adventure. Turned to the dialogue and the opening, Mohammed Bennis participated in many international meeting on poetry and culture. He had, also, translated works from French language, among which included The Wound of the Proper Name, Abdelkébir Khatibi, The Rumor of the air, collected poetry works of Bernard Noël, Tomb of Ibn Arabi, followed by 99 Stations of Yale, poetry collections and The Malady of Islam, three of Abdelwahab Meddeb, A Throw of the Dice poem of Stéphane Mallarmé, published in a bilingual edition in common with Isabella Checcaglini and Bernard Noël at Ypsilon Éditeur in Paris, in 2007, and Archangélique of Georges Bataille in 2010.

He interested in literature, and above all poetry, in his first years at college. His university study was in the Faculty of arts at Fes. Turning toward dialogue, he translates from French language texts into Arabic, and participated in Arabic and International poetry festivals. In addition to his literary work, Bennis has been active on a politico-cultural level. In 1974 he founded the magazine “Al Thaqâfa Al Jadida” (The new Culture), which played an active role in the cultural life of Morocco until it was closed dawn by the Moroccan government in 1984 after unrest in Casablanca. In 1985 together with university professors and writers, he established the publishing house “Dar Toubkal”. He was also the driving force behind the funding of The House of Poetry in Morocco in 1996 and became its president from 1996 to 2003. He addressed in 1999 a call to UNESCO for an International day of poetry. The UNESCO declared Mars 21 as International day of Poetry.

Since 1969 he published about 30 collections of verse and essays in Arabic. Many poems of him was translated and published in French, Spanish, English, Deutsche, Italian, Swedish, Catalonian, Portuguese, Japanese, Slovenian and Macedonian. Several of his collections of poems have already been translated into French, Spanish and Italian and Turkey.

He acted as editor of the Attakafa El Jadids periodical.^[3] He served on the judging panel for the 2008 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.^[4] Bennis has also performed with the Sufi group the Hmadcha Ensemble.^[5]

References

1. ^ Muhsin J. al-Musawi, Arabic poetry, Trajectories of modernity and tradition, Rutledge, London and New York, 2006.p. 20.
2. ^ Serif Grafics, London
3. ^ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Barakat; see Help:Cite errors/Cite error references no text
4. ^ "‘Sunset Oasis’ wins Arabic fiction prize", Middle East Online, 2008-03-11, retrieved 2011-07-23
5. ^ Bali, Priya (2009) "Mohammed Bennis and the Hmadcha Ensemble bring Moroccan Sufi music to UMMA", Michigan Daily, 12 April 2009, retrieved 2011-07-23