Article
27 April - 3 May, 2004
Poets’ diaries: Amina El Bakouri
_w336.jpg)
January 18, 2006
“Good morning mother! Wake up!” The first tender voice I hear today is that of my child Rabi’. He pulls away the covers insisting that I abandon my dream – that spectral space of both consciousness and subconsciousness. I smile as I fondly hug him. My heart goes out to him in the maternal impulse that exists in all of us. It is the path of love and childhood; we always remain children at heart even at the age of 80. Each of us holds images, memories stored away in crevices of the mind. All it takes is a stone to be thrown into the pond of memories; for one to breathe in a distinctive smell or to hear a sound for the birds of forgetfulness to take flight from the nest of oblivion. Our life stories are imprinted in our souls and bodies. I remember a favourite quotation from Anais Nin which I had written on the back of a photograph when I was a college student. My husband had captured a magical moment when he photographed a group of beautiful dogs with their shining fur coats. The quote was: "How can one live in the present when there is no one there. No one to interrupt you or to answer your questions. The present is composed of the pleasure of two non-heavenly bodies joined in a heavenly union."
Wednesday, April 28
A poetic calmness dominates the evening. The tree outside my office window arouses sad memories. Why is solitude difficult? Solitude, for me, is always associated with the passion of writing; the act gives me a sense of mastery. A writing room is an existential necessity. In the future I will turn my child’s room into a study. I don’t object to his sleeping with me, it is not narcissistic on my part to want my child to sleep beside me in case he would need me. The custom in Arab culture requires the attendance of the mother until a certain age. I wake up at night to check on him, sometimes carrying him from his bed to mine. Holding him close to me is like listening to the silence of the world through my warmth and gentleness.
After I send him to his kindergarten, I go into the study for some reading. I keep in a desk drawer my drafts and papers which I often re-read with immense enjoyment. Each piece encapsulate memories, as if a scent from the past haunts the words; a lingering mustiness or a nostalgia perhaps for the days when reading and writing were all I did. Writing came easily to me, and I wrote a lot. Today I fear the truth that the act of writing would uncover. There are many obligations and daily responsibilities that put a demand on my time, and although I acknowledge that the capacity to give is a blessing, there will always exist, in my view, a selfishness that consumes artists in their quest for seclusion and isolation. Artists’ souls search for the intimate space that opens infinite vistas for the self to re-arrange things and the world. The final product: images, words, every poem written becomes like a train station where a segment of the artist’s soul or pain descends and is left behind. The writing journey is a parallel narrative to the life journey.
Thursday, April 29
A depressing fog hovers this morning commiserating with some sad memories. These horrendous photographs displayed on the television screen captioned with media commentary could be the reason to my present touchiness.
Tragic images mirror how the world, more than any previous time, exists on the precipice of catastrophe and is heading, without doubt, to death. Moreover, it is remarkable how these images appear as if unrelated to life eliciting no reaction on the part of the journalists as they read the news on the many competing channels. Last night one journalist with a dull expression invites his viewers to watch some of the bloodiest scenes – which leads me to ask about moral equivalency between what we see and how we react and to question the secret to the overwhelming presence of terror – as an extreme condition of fear – that has been sweeping the world. Many other themes dominate the evening news: destruction, famine and natural disasters. Hostility that is born out of blind faith in ideological dogma full of bigotry and extremism characterizes fanatics who seek the realization of their own vision regardless if the price is humanity’s annihilation. Ignorance was a good excuse in the past but in the current world of multinational and global discourse there should be trust in progress. The reality is that there exist those who seek to destroy it. Violence only begets violence. The world after September 11 is in need, more than any time past, of a call for peace pledged by intellectuals and politicians. Enough of the rhetoric of causes, conclusions and the clashes of civilization. One should welcome mutuality and cultural dialogue.
Friday, April 30
Today these verses of the Tunisian poet Abu al-Qasim al-Shabi came to mind. It is from his poem “The canticle of the brave.” I believe that his hopes and his sensitive heart were dashed against world’s sins – he passed as quickly from the scene of life as a morning star leaving part of his soul eternally in his poems. Death fears no one, in my view, except true artists. Poets are creatures of intellectual and physical anxiety who choose to squander their youth between life and death, or between writing and eternity.
To exist with consciousness might be less daunting in the sense that we seek to immortalize all that is beautiful in us through writing, thinking, traveling to the unknown and the boundless in search of meaning. We are guided by the intuition of the seer and the insight of a poet who "denudes his heart," as Baudelaire said. The artist today needs to contribute to bitter reality a measure of the creative imagination, something beautiful even if it were simple. In the days to come, searching for the simple in life would be like seeking a miracle.
Saturday, May 1
I blamed myself this morning, because I did not start early enough. Attending to husband and children does not mean that a woman neglects – without exaggerating or overlooking the essential duties – some beautiful rituals that provide her with moral confidence. In scanning a recreational magazine, I noticed how the eccentric current fashions do not seem to deter the young these days from rushing to buy them. They want to acquire the same emaciated look in tight or worn out clothes. There was a time when one would notice in the street many different types of beautiful women whose modesty crowned their individuality. Today we have reproduced smiles – orthodontic uniformity. I think the world looses some of its magic if it looses that initial innocence.
Sunday, May 2
I feel suffocated! Sometimes Rabat, where I live, feels like a bewitched city. I miss my own city of Taza for its depth and eclecticism. Our relationship to space plays a large role in our lives beyond the obvious topographical or geometrical dimensions. There is the psychological aspect of openness and infinity.
There are also dream places that inhabit the mind: the subliminal like caves, graves, caverns, dungeons; or open spaces like deserts or oceans; or higher plateaus like minarets or houses; or isolated and intimate like the “self.”
Taza is the city that encapsulates my private mythology. So apart from being my birth place, and the place where my family and parents still live, it has a deep symbolic presence as a keepsake for all the flavours, the odours, the thoughts of childhood and adolescence. The silence of its caves are like holes in the soul, deep and precipitous. Taza has always given me a spiritual solace and an existential balance. That is why I have celebrated its opulence in my collection of poems entitled, “Seeing you, the laudatory poems celebrate you.”
How I miss you Taza! How I miss my innocent childhood!
Monday, May 3
Facing my desk are two favourite cultural posters: the first depicts the House of Poetry in Morocco which had organized a poetry evening for the International Woman’s Day (8 March) and the second poster was issued for the International Poetry Day (21 March). I find myself musing over the women poets who had participated in both events: they were inquisitive, creative, competent and refined. These Moroccan women embodied their poetic dreams; they exchanged their decorative jewelry for poetic rhyme, the daily mawals for poems, they ascended the pinnacles of language to describe the beauty of the universe by dipping their quills into the ink well of its essence. They have a resonating influence, even if a minor one, on the map of writing.
Organizing cultural and poetic festivals is a victory to the value of aesthetics. Attending them is, in essence, a search for forgotten crevices, for the beam that would elucidate the darkness. Art and poetry will always be part of us as much as it is part of the air and the earth with all its richness.
Poetry is a feeling; it has never been the prerogative of one people, race, or nation. It is a fullness, a glow, a searing fire. If poetry dies, what remains?
Read more about Amina El Bakouri and her poetry on her Poetry International profile page.
In this “Poet’s diary,” Moroccan poet Amina El Bakouri muses about maternal love, terror and the role of poetry in her life in Rabat. “The artist today needs to contribute to bitter reality a measure of the creative imagination, something beautiful even if it were simple. In the days to come, searching for the simple in life would be like seeking a miracle.”
Tuesday, April 27“Good morning mother! Wake up!” The first tender voice I hear today is that of my child Rabi’. He pulls away the covers insisting that I abandon my dream – that spectral space of both consciousness and subconsciousness. I smile as I fondly hug him. My heart goes out to him in the maternal impulse that exists in all of us. It is the path of love and childhood; we always remain children at heart even at the age of 80. Each of us holds images, memories stored away in crevices of the mind. All it takes is a stone to be thrown into the pond of memories; for one to breathe in a distinctive smell or to hear a sound for the birds of forgetfulness to take flight from the nest of oblivion. Our life stories are imprinted in our souls and bodies. I remember a favourite quotation from Anais Nin which I had written on the back of a photograph when I was a college student. My husband had captured a magical moment when he photographed a group of beautiful dogs with their shining fur coats. The quote was: "How can one live in the present when there is no one there. No one to interrupt you or to answer your questions. The present is composed of the pleasure of two non-heavenly bodies joined in a heavenly union."
Wednesday, April 28
A poetic calmness dominates the evening. The tree outside my office window arouses sad memories. Why is solitude difficult? Solitude, for me, is always associated with the passion of writing; the act gives me a sense of mastery. A writing room is an existential necessity. In the future I will turn my child’s room into a study. I don’t object to his sleeping with me, it is not narcissistic on my part to want my child to sleep beside me in case he would need me. The custom in Arab culture requires the attendance of the mother until a certain age. I wake up at night to check on him, sometimes carrying him from his bed to mine. Holding him close to me is like listening to the silence of the world through my warmth and gentleness.
After I send him to his kindergarten, I go into the study for some reading. I keep in a desk drawer my drafts and papers which I often re-read with immense enjoyment. Each piece encapsulate memories, as if a scent from the past haunts the words; a lingering mustiness or a nostalgia perhaps for the days when reading and writing were all I did. Writing came easily to me, and I wrote a lot. Today I fear the truth that the act of writing would uncover. There are many obligations and daily responsibilities that put a demand on my time, and although I acknowledge that the capacity to give is a blessing, there will always exist, in my view, a selfishness that consumes artists in their quest for seclusion and isolation. Artists’ souls search for the intimate space that opens infinite vistas for the self to re-arrange things and the world. The final product: images, words, every poem written becomes like a train station where a segment of the artist’s soul or pain descends and is left behind. The writing journey is a parallel narrative to the life journey.
Thursday, April 29
A depressing fog hovers this morning commiserating with some sad memories. These horrendous photographs displayed on the television screen captioned with media commentary could be the reason to my present touchiness.
Tragic images mirror how the world, more than any previous time, exists on the precipice of catastrophe and is heading, without doubt, to death. Moreover, it is remarkable how these images appear as if unrelated to life eliciting no reaction on the part of the journalists as they read the news on the many competing channels. Last night one journalist with a dull expression invites his viewers to watch some of the bloodiest scenes – which leads me to ask about moral equivalency between what we see and how we react and to question the secret to the overwhelming presence of terror – as an extreme condition of fear – that has been sweeping the world. Many other themes dominate the evening news: destruction, famine and natural disasters. Hostility that is born out of blind faith in ideological dogma full of bigotry and extremism characterizes fanatics who seek the realization of their own vision regardless if the price is humanity’s annihilation. Ignorance was a good excuse in the past but in the current world of multinational and global discourse there should be trust in progress. The reality is that there exist those who seek to destroy it. Violence only begets violence. The world after September 11 is in need, more than any time past, of a call for peace pledged by intellectuals and politicians. Enough of the rhetoric of causes, conclusions and the clashes of civilization. One should welcome mutuality and cultural dialogue.
Friday, April 30
I will survive despite disease and enemies
like an eagle on the highest peak
I approach the sun contemptuously
and the clouds, the rain and all inauspicious omens.
I walk dreamily through the world of feelings
as I sing. This is the nature of poets
like an eagle on the highest peak
I approach the sun contemptuously
and the clouds, the rain and all inauspicious omens.
I walk dreamily through the world of feelings
as I sing. This is the nature of poets
Today these verses of the Tunisian poet Abu al-Qasim al-Shabi came to mind. It is from his poem “The canticle of the brave.” I believe that his hopes and his sensitive heart were dashed against world’s sins – he passed as quickly from the scene of life as a morning star leaving part of his soul eternally in his poems. Death fears no one, in my view, except true artists. Poets are creatures of intellectual and physical anxiety who choose to squander their youth between life and death, or between writing and eternity.
To exist with consciousness might be less daunting in the sense that we seek to immortalize all that is beautiful in us through writing, thinking, traveling to the unknown and the boundless in search of meaning. We are guided by the intuition of the seer and the insight of a poet who "denudes his heart," as Baudelaire said. The artist today needs to contribute to bitter reality a measure of the creative imagination, something beautiful even if it were simple. In the days to come, searching for the simple in life would be like seeking a miracle.
Saturday, May 1
I blamed myself this morning, because I did not start early enough. Attending to husband and children does not mean that a woman neglects – without exaggerating or overlooking the essential duties – some beautiful rituals that provide her with moral confidence. In scanning a recreational magazine, I noticed how the eccentric current fashions do not seem to deter the young these days from rushing to buy them. They want to acquire the same emaciated look in tight or worn out clothes. There was a time when one would notice in the street many different types of beautiful women whose modesty crowned their individuality. Today we have reproduced smiles – orthodontic uniformity. I think the world looses some of its magic if it looses that initial innocence.
Sunday, May 2
I feel suffocated! Sometimes Rabat, where I live, feels like a bewitched city. I miss my own city of Taza for its depth and eclecticism. Our relationship to space plays a large role in our lives beyond the obvious topographical or geometrical dimensions. There is the psychological aspect of openness and infinity.
There are also dream places that inhabit the mind: the subliminal like caves, graves, caverns, dungeons; or open spaces like deserts or oceans; or higher plateaus like minarets or houses; or isolated and intimate like the “self.”
Taza is the city that encapsulates my private mythology. So apart from being my birth place, and the place where my family and parents still live, it has a deep symbolic presence as a keepsake for all the flavours, the odours, the thoughts of childhood and adolescence. The silence of its caves are like holes in the soul, deep and precipitous. Taza has always given me a spiritual solace and an existential balance. That is why I have celebrated its opulence in my collection of poems entitled, “Seeing you, the laudatory poems celebrate you.”
How I miss you Taza! How I miss my innocent childhood!
Monday, May 3
Facing my desk are two favourite cultural posters: the first depicts the House of Poetry in Morocco which had organized a poetry evening for the International Woman’s Day (8 March) and the second poster was issued for the International Poetry Day (21 March). I find myself musing over the women poets who had participated in both events: they were inquisitive, creative, competent and refined. These Moroccan women embodied their poetic dreams; they exchanged their decorative jewelry for poetic rhyme, the daily mawals for poems, they ascended the pinnacles of language to describe the beauty of the universe by dipping their quills into the ink well of its essence. They have a resonating influence, even if a minor one, on the map of writing.
Organizing cultural and poetic festivals is a victory to the value of aesthetics. Attending them is, in essence, a search for forgotten crevices, for the beam that would elucidate the darkness. Art and poetry will always be part of us as much as it is part of the air and the earth with all its richness.
Poetry is a feeling; it has never been the prerogative of one people, race, or nation. It is a fullness, a glow, a searing fire. If poetry dies, what remains?
Read more about Amina El Bakouri and her poetry on her Poetry International profile page.
© Amina El Bakouri
Sponsors
Partners
LantarenVenster – Verhalenhuis Belvédère