The Lebanese poet Bilal Al-Masry published a new poetry collection entitled: “Crushing His Head with the Stone of Memories” as part of a series that presents Arab poetic voices.
Correspondent -Beirut
The Lebanese poet Bilal Al-Masry published a new poetry collection entitled: “Crushing His Head with the Stone of Memories (and other texts)” as part of “Ishraqat,” a series that presents Arab poetic voices, whose texts are chosen by the iconic Arab poet Adonis.
It is a “closed” series, issued by “Dar Al-Takween” within a limited period of time, which may not exceed one year. Supervised by: Arwad Esber. The cover was designed by the artist Ahmed Mualla, a graphic designer and photographer, who is in contact with poetry, with much experience. In his enthusiasm for this experiment, he suggested returning to the basic square, to the most austere minimum, to formulate a graphic character for the poetry collections’ covers. A precise chess game, engineered in the imagination to draw the names of collections and poets, and the letters and their connections or transitions move in proportion to the available space, or as dictated by the artistry in shaping the body of the word.
The series is published with a special grant from the Ghassan Jadid Foundation for Development. It will include about 30 names, and these names will be celebrated upon the completion of the series, through a group of events and activities, and selections from the collections published in French and Spanish will be published.
About this series, Adonis says: “A travel that rids poetry of the traditional cultural dualism: body/spirit, and opens up the space of indivisible being. You think and write what you feel, dream, and imagine. And you feel, dream, and imagine what you think and write: that is the horizon of the project embodied by this series of poetry collections, which appear today after a long struggle…
Thus, the reader, the creative reader, will see that the poem on this horizon is a rich, diverse field of energy, that words are living beings, and that poetry changes the world, creating new relationships between words and things that in turn create a new image for this world: another beauty, another love, another depth, and other truths…
Read also: The dead are many inside me – Poetry from Lebanon
Readers will see poetry that goes beyond the simple or naive emotionalism that is usually described in poetry written by women. It is usually called “female poetry,” which is emotional, to distinguish it from male poetry, which is described as strong, durable, or virile. These are, in depth, characteristics that come from “society”, from outside poetry, and not from poetry itself, strictly speaking.
If it is necessary to describe, we can describe the poetry presented in this series as radiant, lively, ardent, explosive and solid, especially aesthetically, it is dazzling and charming. It awakens all feelings, and allows many things that are dormant in us to wake up and move. Thus, this series represents a historical turning point in poetic language, and in the poem alike. This turn is based on two principles: The first is to gain insight into the body, and to become deeply acquainted with its conditions, revealing them and their horizons. The second is writing in this light, and in complete isolation from the prevailing culture in its two aspects: the retrospective – traditional, coming from the traditional past, and the metaphorical – traditional also coming from a foreign outside through translation, in particular.
Also read: Contemporary World Literature: Poetry from Lebanon
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