Amina El Bakouri

The poetry of Amina El Bakouri reflects a high sense of self-assertion, both as a woman and a poet. In fact, self-assertion has always been a characteristic of feminine Arabic poetry since the pre-islamic days. Almost all Arabic poetesses have been brilliant and strongwilled women, which is perhaps the reason why feminine Arabic poetry has not been given its due by poetry critics (who are all men). It is also the reason why Bakouri wrote her PhD dissertation on three Moroccan women poets: Malika Assimi, Touria sekkat and Wafa Lamrani.

Her poems, which are rather long, are full of references to the Arabic poetic heritage. She excels in producing intertextual connections that make reading her poems a kind of recovery of poetic memory. However, her poetry is enjoyable even to the reader not versed in classical Arabic literature, because of the beauty of her language, the freshness of images, and her meditative elegiac tone.
Bibliography

Poetry
Ra’ian Ya’tika Lmadih, Sais Midit Publications, Rabat, 2002