Poet

Ahmed Joumari

(Morocco, 1939)

Biography

Ahmed Joumari was born in 1939 in Casablanca, Morocco. His education was based on the classical Moroccan model, with a great respect for, and veneration of, classical Arabic. He completed his graduate studies of classical Arabic at Ibn Youssef University in Marrakesh. This classical education left an indelible mark on his approach to writing poetry, for the reader of his poems cannot mistake his celebration of the purity of the Arabic language.

Ahmed Joumari was one of the pioneers of modern Arabic poetry along with Ahmed Mejjati, Mohammed Elkammar Elguennouni, Mohammed Seghini and others. Besides his concern with the purity of Arabic, which is apparent in his poetic diction, he also developed an interest in politics. This translated itself into what came to be recognized in his poetry as revolutionary romanticism.

Joumari spent his entire life in Casablanca, the city where he was born and where he died in 1995. Thus the journey of love and death which he celebrated in the first of his poetry books has come full circle.

Publications
Poems of Love and Death, Dar Annasr Almaghribia, Casablanca, 1979
Leaves of Night, Dar Annasr Almaghribia, Casablanca, 1989