Personal Info
- Country of residence: Jordan
Information
Yahya Al-Numeiri Al-Naimat, better
known as Amjad Nasser (1955 - October 31, 2019) is a Jordanian writer and poet
who resided in London. He has been working for Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper in
London since its publication in 1989. He is considered one of the pioneers of
poetic modernity and the prose poem. His first collection of poetry was
published in 1997, titled (Praise for Another Cafe). He passed away on October
31, 2019, after a struggle with illness, at the age of 64.
his upbringing
Yahya al-Numairi al-Naimat, known as
Amjad Nasser, was born in Tora, northern Jordan, in 1955. He is the eldest son
of a Bedouin family whose members are professional in military work. He began
writing poetry and opening up to political life in Jordan and the Arab world in
high school, and by virtue of his residence in Zarqa, he was affected by the
situation of the displaced Palestinians and admired the Palestinian commando
work that he joined after graduating from high school.
He worked in Jordanian television
and the press in Amman for about two years, then left for Lebanon in 1977 after
a political crisis related to the organization he was affiliated with. For
media and cultural work in the Palestinian media, he worked as an editor for
the cultural pages in the “Al-Hadaf” magazine, which was founded by the martyr
Ghassan Kanafani, and he remained there until the Israeli invasion and the
siege of Beirut in the summer of 1982, when he joined the Palestinian Radio
during the siege period. In the context of his political work, Amjad Nasser
joined the Institute of Scientific Socialism in Aden, where he studied
political science in the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen during the era
of Abdel Fattah Ismail.
He published his first collection of
poetry, "Praise for Another Cafe" in 1979, presented by the Iraqi
poet Saadi Youssef. Despite his political and ideological affiliation with the
ranks of the left, his poem remained far from political sloganeering, so it
worked to celebrate the daily, the detailed, and the sensual, rather than the
direct political one. This feature has been imprinting Amjad Nasser's poetry
for a long time.
Moving on to the prose poem
He was one of the first young poets
to move to writing the so-called “prose poem” after a distinguished experience
in writing an iambic poem. Starting with his second poetic work “Since Gilead”(1981), Amjad Nasser, whom Saadi Youssef described as the “arar” of the new
Jordan, continued. Writing this poem, he gave it an Arab specificity that was
lacking in his third work, “Shepherds of Solitude” (1986), according to the
critic Subhi Hadidi. This appears in his poetic work “The Secret of Who Sees
You” (1994), which is considered the first of its kind in modern Arabic love
poetry, according to the description of a number of Arab critics. Breaths »(1997) in which he dealt, in a panoramic and epic lyrical manner, with the
tragedy of Abu Abdullah al-Saghir, the last Arab king in Andalusia.
In his last poetic work, “A Life as
an Intermittent Narrative” (2004), Amjad Nasser charts a new path in the Arabic
prose poem and brings poetry to unprecedented narrative borders without the
poem giving up its poetic tension inherent in the depths of the text. This work
received many reactions in life. Arab poetics welcomes this bold openness to
narration and prose methods, and those who consider that the dose of prosaic in
it is greater than the poem can bear, but Amjad Nasser’s thesis in this book
remains a new aesthetic proposal that raises a debate in an Arab poetic arena in
which there is almost no debate, now, on issues Form and content, and this was
confirmed by the Lebanese poet and critic Abbas Baydoun in his dialogue with
Amjad Nasser after the book was published. Amjad Nasser moved from Beirut after
its siege in 1982 to Cyprus, where he continued to work within the framework of
the Palestinian media, then moved to London in 1987 to work in its Arabic
press, and in 1989 he participated in the establishment of Al-Quds Al-Arabi
newspaper and supervised its cultural department until his death.
Recognition of excellence and
international recognition
He translated some of his works into
French, Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch and English, and participated in a
large number of Arab and international poetry festivals, such as the Arab
Poetry Festival in Cairo and the Jerash Festival in Jordan, in which he oversaw
the international section, in addition to the London International Poetry
Festival, in which he was the first Arab poet to be read in His opening
evening, the Rotterdam International Poetry Festival and the Medellín Festival
in Colombia, in addition to his participation in the arbitration committees of
Arab and international awards in literature and journalism, such as the Abdul
Mohsen Al-Qattan Literary Prize and the “Literary Reportage” award granted by
the prestigious German magazine “Liter”. He has published eight collections of
poetry and two books on literature. Al-Rahla, who is considered one of the
first contemporary Arab intellectuals to be interested in this written genre
and write about it, and at the end of 2006 he won the Muhammad Al-Maghout Prize
for Poetry. His work was also inspired by some Arab artists such as Diaa
Al-Azzawi, Fawzi Al-Dulaimi and Hakim Jamma’in, and their inspirations were
published in art books. Awarded the Jerusalem Medal for Culture, Arts and
Literature in 2019.
More than one TV documentary program
has been investigated about him, most notably the movie produced by Jordanian
TV entitled “Sinbad Berri” on the occasion of choosing Amman as the capital of
Arab culture in 2002, and what was produced by “Al-Arabiya Channel” within the
framework of the “Rawafed” program, which was broadcast in two episodes.
A large number of Arab critics and
poets wrote about Amjad Nasser's experience, such as: Adonis, Subhi Hadidi,
Hatem Al-Sakr, Kamal Abu Deeb, Sabri Hafez, Abbas Baydoun, Hussein bin Hamza,
Muhammad Badawi, Rashid Yahyawi, Qasim Haddad, Fakhri Saleh, Muhammad Ali Shams
al-Din, Shawqi Bazi’, Mohsen Jassim al-Musawi, Rajaa bin Salama, Fathi Abdullah,
Helmy Salem, and some of this money was issued in two ceremonial issues of the
Palestinian “Poets” magazine and the Jordanian “Ideas” devoted to his poetic
experience.
his business
Amjad Nasser has eight collections
of poetry and one novel. His poetry works were published in one volume by the
Arab Institute for Studies and Publishing in 2002:
"Praise for another café,"
Beirut, 1979
"Since Gilead has been climbing
the mountain," Beirut 1981
"Shepherds of Solitude",
Amman 1986
The Arrival of Strangers, London,
first edition, 1990
"The Secret of Who Saw
You", London, 1994
"Athar al-Afir" - Poetry
Selections - Cairo 1995
"Knocking Wings" - Travels
-, London, Beirut 1996
Murtaqa al-Anfas, Beirut 1997
Alone, like the wolf of Al-Farazdaq,
Damascus 2008
"Where the Rain Does Not
Fall" - a novel - 2010
Life as an Intermittent Narrative -
Poetry - Beirut, Lebanon 2004.
Here is the rose" - novel -
2017
In the Land of Marquis" - a
book of travels. The book was published as a gift with the Dubai Cultural
Magazine, published by Dar Al-Sada in Dubai in 2012.
of his poems
Three poems (YouTube) on YouTube
source
Achievements and Awards
- Years in active
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