Poetry
غنوا يا أطفال
Not translated into English
Sulayman al-Isa · 1979
Synopsis
Sing, children: the whole body of songs and poems that their author wrote for the young, gathered in ten parts. It includes familiar songs, such as the one in which the child, bird of the house, makes his mother's kiss the light of his day, pieces staged for the classroom, and poems that sing of the homeland, the sacrifice of the ancestors, the refusal of defeat and resistance, with an openly acknowledged educational aim.
Context
The collection appeared in Beirut in 1979 and brings together, in ten parts, everything its author had written for children since June 1967, when the defeat had turned him towards them. Many of these pieces were set to music and sung in schools; two hundred songs were later collected with their scores, in collaboration with the musician Kamil al-Qudsi. His wife, the academic Malaka Abyad, has devoted several books to this poetry for children.
Who it is for
Ten volumes in Arabic, with no French edition. It helps to know that these verses were written to be spoken aloud and sung by whole classes, not to be read in silence.
Prizes and reception
The complete collection of the songs that made its author the “poet of childhood”, a title given to him by the Syrian press and learned institutions.