Poetry
L'horizon est d'argile
Not translated into English
Mohammed Loakira · 1971
Synopsis
First book of poems by its author, a slim volume of fifty-nine pages published in 1971 by Pierre Jean Oswald, in Honfleur, with a preface by Abdellatif Laâbi. One of the poems had first been given to the journal Souffles. According to the study of Moroccan poetry published by Limag, the poet denounces in it the “horreurs”, the “brûlures” and the “nuits cauchemardesques” imposed on the peoples of Africa, and his voice rises in defiance against all mutilations.
Context
In the Quebec journal Liberté, in 1973, Gilles Cyr already cited the collection among the books by the young writers whom Souffles had revealed, alongside Plus haute mémoire by Mostafa Nissaboury and the first poems of Tahar Ben Jelloun. It opens a body of work pursued up to a last collection in 2015, in which Hassan Wahbi read a “poetics of memory” and a “dialectic of the obscure and the unveiling”. A later book, Grain de nul désert, published in Rabat in 1994, received in 1995 the distinction reserved for poetry, under the chairmanship of Jean d'Ormesson.
Who it is for
Short collection of poems in French; the 1971 original edition can be consulted at the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Prizes and reception
The author's first book, cited as early as 1973 among the discoveries of Souffles; a later collection earned the poet a national prize in 1995.
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The pages consulted to check this page.