The Year of Poetry

By Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
President, Asia Journalists Association

CAIRO: I can only call it the Year of Poetry, as it celebrated me just as I did for the poem, over the full four seasons.

In Egypt, the poetry procession began with the sixth edition of the Eurasian Literary Festival (LIFFT 2023) January 29 – February 1, 2023. At its conclusion, I handed over the festival’s flag to the winner of the Gold Medal, Dr. Wale Okediran, after I had received it when I won its fifth edition’s GM in Istanbul. Therefore, Nigeria will be the destination of the next edition for the Literary Eurasian Festival of Festivals, in accordance with an established tradition founded by poet Margarita Al.

During this festival, I had four poetry publications: The first (4 Poets on the Silk Road) included my poems and selections translated from English by the poets Konstantin Kedrov, Sergey Berikov and Margarita Al.

The second book was a translation of poems by the poet Alexandra Ochirova, UNESCO Ambassador, entitled (My Horizons – In Sequence). It was published in Arabic, English and Russian.

The third book was the latest issue of the Silk Road Anthology series (Nano-Poems for Africa), which I edited for more than 150 poets from 50 countries.

My fourth book was my collection (A Street in Cairo) in the Russian language, translated by the Russian- Azerbaijani poet Eldar Akhadov, its first edition was issued in Moscow as part of the Golden Collection of the Literary Eurasian Festival (LIFFT), while its second edition was issued by the Silk Road Literature Series, in Cairo.

At the conclusion of the Cairo event, Margarita Al and I were guests on the Nile Cultural TV Channel, where we presented the festival’s activities and announced the establishment of the World Organization of Writers (WOW), which we signed with iconic pens from 18 countries, in Cairo.

After I was chosen as the National Coordinator of the World Poetry Movement (WPM) in Egypt, I participated in the movement’s first virtual congress, in preparation for the meeting that took place last summer at the first World Congress of the Movement that was founded in 2011.

During the second festival that I witnessed this year, which was the Medellin International Poetry Festival, I met the iconic poet Fernando Rendón, General Coordinator of the World Poetry Movement (WPM), who has founded the festival 35 years ago. Together we honored the name of the late poet Jack Hirschman with the participation of his wife, the poet Agneta Falk and the Venezuela’s sectorial vice president of Communication, Culture and Tourism, poet Freddy Ñáñez.

From Colombia, I traveled to Caracas, which co-hosted the first World Congress of the World Poetry Movement (WPM). I had opportunities to read poetry through the two festivals in Medellin and Caracas at the Venezuela World Poetry Festival, not only in poetry theatres, culture houses, and libraries, as the active Egyptian embassy in Venezuela also arranged a fruitful program during which I was able to read my poems on television, with Spanish translation.

I was also happy later when the Venezuelan poet, Mariela Cordero, contacted me to translate my poems from English into Spanish, which happened in more than one journalistic space. These bilateral poetic visits had the chance to appear on the Nile Cultural TV Channel through the program (Beit Al Qasid) (The Home of Poem).

If Al-Ahram Online had published news about those poetic activities, my books, and the honor of winning the Commonwealth of Peoples Medal, its paper edition published my first poem I wrote to my mother, in the Literary Friday Supplement, which is headed by the writer Abdel-Halim Ghazali.

This year also witnessed the addition of a specific version of my collection (A Street in Cairo), and what is new is that it is trilingual and published in Belgrade by Alia Mundi for Promoting Cultural Diversity. Along with Arabic and English texts, the poet Ana Stjelja translated these selections into Serbian. This year, I began preparing for my new book (The Monk at top of the Gray Mountain), which consists of one poem that has been translated by world poets into more than twenty languages!

This spring, the Iranian poet, Professor Nasrin Shakibi Mumtaz, sent me two new collections published in Tehran in Persian, in which she translated two of my Arabic volumes: (On the Path of Death) and (The Memory of Silence), under the Farsi titles (Barband Marg) and (Khatira Sekot), by An Soo Publishing House.

Prof. Nasrin had previously translated selections of my poems issued by Afraz Publishing House in Tehran, and we celebrated the collection together there, in the publisher’s pavilion during the days of the Tehran International Book Fair, ten years ago.

The happiest poetic meetings this summer were with my friend Ko Un, whose anthology I translated (A Thousand and One Lives). We brought back memories of our first meeting when I gave him my novel translated into Korean (The Road to Shamawes), and he recently gave me a poem with his calligraphy, in my name, and I sent him a special poem, published in the Anthology in celebration of his ninetieth birthday.

Kaohsiung World Poetry Festival in Taiwan, November, had received my two books translated from English and published simultaneously. The first was a translation of an anthology entitled (4 Hakka Poets from Taiwan), namely Ching-Fa Wu, seng Kuei-Hai, Du Pan Fang-ge, and Fang-Tzu Chang, and the second was a translation of the collection of poems by Taiwanese poet, storyteller, and painter Miao-yi Tu (They Are the Daughters of Siraya).

The travel experience inspired me to write it down poetically, and her pieces were titled (Kaohsiung Windows), as photo cards of scenes recorded by the lens during the trip. Soon, it will also be shown on TV. I also met writer Hosam AliAwi, in my home town Benha, who introduced me in his TV program (In Pen and Brush), to cover my literary career.

The year will not end except with poetry, as it began, and in two new languages. After translating (A Street in Cairo) over the past years into Spanish, thanks to Dr. Nadia Gamal al-Din, Sindhi translated by Nasir Aijaz, Turkish by Metin Fındıkçı, German with the effort of Lewis Akinsinde (and a cover by my artist friend Muhammad Abla), and Russian by Eldar Akhado, the writer Tarana Muhammad, whom I met in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, during the signing of my collection (A Street in Cairo) in the Russian House there.

She surprised me by using the Russian text of the collection, along with my Arabic collections, and English ones as well, to translate them into the Azerbaijani language.

As for the Pakistani poet and publisher Shabbir Soomro, he used Nasir Aijaz’s Sindhi text of my book to present an Urdu version, issued jointly by IRTEQUAS Publishers, Karachi in Pakistan and the Al-Nashir Publishing and Distribution House in Egypt as part of the Silk Road Literature Series.

What is new after that is the initiative of the poet Devesh Path Sariya , from India, to translate a selection of my poems into the Hindi language, which my poems first met when the poet Rati Saxena translated some of my poems in her magazine, Kritya. My poems also first found their way into Taiwanese in the anthology published by the Kaohsiung World Poetry Festival.

Just as I was happy with the gifts of friends who offered their effort and time to present my poems in their languages, and to interview me on poetry, as did the Italian poet and editor Gioia Lomasti, and the Lebanese poet Taghrid BoMMerhi, who translated my poems into Portuguese, I was equally keen to contribute to introducing poets from Egypt and the world, and to nominate them for international participations, whether by writing about their publications in the AsiaN, or in conferences I participated in online, which were too many to list in this haste.

At the intersection with poetry and pain, I was keen to allocate a television space to Palestine, in response to the ongoing tragedy in Gaza. It was an interview entitled (Palestinian Dresses from the River to the Sea), in which we prepared with poetry, songs, pictures and videos to revive the immortal Palestinian presence in their lost homeland.

Finally, I had the pleasure of editing the second book by Tamil poets, chosen by Dr. Jahir Husain, or translating the poems of poets of Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America, and their studies into Arabic, or writing introductions to their publications, or sending video speeches of their events, as I did in the celebration of the Colección Sur Editores in Havana on its thirtieth anniversary, in addition to a jury member in more than one competition.

The most recent of them was Literary Asia, organized by the Kazakh writer Bakhyt Rustemov on the 800th anniversary of Al-Malik al-Zahir Baybars. All of them confirm my belief in the role of translation as a bridge between cultures, and the goal of poetry is to be at the heart of this bridge.