Amman -
Poet Jamil Abu Sbeih believes that he is raising the banner of renewal in the Arabic poem, and that his vision or method of adopting "poetic narratives" will prevail in the near future, despite the differing views of readers and critics.
Abu Sbeih considers the literary genre that he adopts in Jordan as a remarkable development and rescue from a state he called "stillness" in the Arabic poem. He confidently affirms that the future is for poetic narratives, and advises those who want to climb to the top and put their mark on the poetic scene with the poetic genre that adopts the narrative narrative as constructive and content in The poem.
According to his opinion, the Arabic poem is no longer able to develop its language, and for this it is necessary to change to the literature of "poetic narratives" that adopt a visual language. Therefore, those who want the poem to regain its position as an influencer and a catalyst for attitudes, emotions and motivation should choose this new poetic approach, considering that " Whoever does not renew his language, the train does not wait for anyone.”
Critic and poet Dr. Rashid Issa believes that "Abu Sobeih's narratives" have not gained their legitimacy, describing them as permissible and necessary jurisprudence and a brave and unique adventure, but he does not bet that they will gain recognition in the short term.
On the other hand, critic Muhammad Al-Mashaikh believes that "narratives" have added a magical ability to combine symbols and metaphors, and have an impact on the art of poetry, and not on the poetic scene.
Abu Sbeih says that he chose the prose poem in addition to writing the poem of free and household poetry. Exploring a new geography for the art of poetic language.
Sobeih believes that this type of poetic writing “narratives” is a new, third type whose language did not exist before, because it relies on the visuals that are generated from the image before it in what we call “spectacle” so that it consists of successive images and their reproduction as an alternative to the prose poem or what they call it. freebies".
He considers that "Narratives" is a non-pulpit poem, and it cannot be read from a pulpit except that it is read with the eyes only, and therefore it got rid of most of what the Arabic prose poem was suffering from, this suffering that made it unable to develop, and it is a gray stage between prose and poetry and one of the most difficult Types of poetic writing because it contains many slips, "some find it easy, but they do not know its secrets. They are poems that depend on image and brevity."
Listen without applause
Narratives are a new style for the poetic scene.. How did the audience receive it, especially in poetry festivals?
Poetry audiences - especially intellectuals - received it enthusiastically. If you read a long poem like the narrative "The Fabric of the Storm", it ends and the audience believes that there are other poems to come, because it does not depend on applause and does not demand it, but depends on listening and following the imagination. It talks about lived reality, especially the combat reality with the Zionist enemy.
And the poem "I'm not crying" in which it came / but my tears are flowing / I put my palm on my forehead / I hide my face / .. it talks about a Palestinian family whose home was demolished by the occupation and the husband is prevented from advancing and he sees his family under the rubble but he does not surrender or cry and shouts to the soldiers: "Your day is mine." tomorrow".
"Narratives of Light" by Jamil Abu Sbeih (Al-Jazeera)
It is said that poetry is for pleasure or politeness.. What do you think?
Poetry is not an employee, but rather a refined human work through the imagination and ordinary human life, including happiness and pain, so any text carries what is inside the poet of pain and happiness, and therefore does not deal with one part of life and leaves another.
Personally, I am not a poet of occasions, nor a poet of free time, or a poet of a specific goal. I carry what a person suffers to contain the world, and hence the universality of the text, even if it did not reach wide circulation.
Some of your poems tend towards Sufism.. Are you a Sufi?
I have set a basic limit for myself, which is not to blaspheme, and I do not practice what many poets practice in public life, so they wonder how I became a poet. “Hazrat”, which is the collective dhikr in the presence of the Sheikh of the Abrahamic Order.
Personally, I practiced their behavior and their veins and lived them in beautiful singing gardens lived by the ascetic, which had an impact on the poetic language that I write, and the poems of the Sufis - such as Imam Al-Junaid, Ibn Arabi and Rabia Al-Adawiya - added to me a stock of knowledge so that my master's thesis was entitled "The Model Woman" inspired of Sufism.
The cultural scene in Jordan is in decline.. How do you see the status quo?
What is happening now in the cultural arena of obstacles is the result of the control of what he called "marginalists" over the cultural decision and the marginalization of the real creators and the rise of those who climb on the shoulders of others' creations and texts and deny them, so there are many superficial works that do not even deserve to be published in the readers' mail, as he said.
There is a state of proliferation of topics that undermine the values of society, which have overcome our cultural heritage and work to interrupt the cultural heritage and the control of what has been called “the opium of phones.” This difficult situation prompted me to appeal to society to return to the inherited Arab culture that can be developed and not to adopt globalization that kills the human personality and culture and to move away from flattening Original ideas and sites that spread poison and instill in the minds of our youth ideas that disavow a person from his personality and culture, such as homosexuality and the new Middle East, and others, and turn him into a person without an identity.
Hence, I called for a corrective revolution that restores our Arab personality to its Islamic culture, and it is not true what some intellectuals believe that cutting it off from its cultural heritage leads it to universality, so why did we abandon our past?!
For this purpose, an intellectual retreat was held at the King Abdullah Center in Zarqa recently, with the participation of experts from the cultural arena, during which we studied the current situation and took a package of recommendations that were submitted to the Ministry of Culture, the most prominent of which is not to license an applicant for cultural licenses unless he issues two books and monitor the activities of licensed cultural associations and practice censorship Artistic seminars that were opened to the marginalized of culture to be in a position of choice and control, which led to the retreat of intellectuals and those with advanced experiences from competition and their boycott of events.
Brave bid
In his interview with Al-Jazeera Net, the critic and poet Rashid Issa commented on the experience of the poet Jamil Abu Sobeih, stressing that he had seen the experience of poetic narratives, and added, "One of the nature of poetry, like any other art, is that it bears renewal and the need for transformations in formal structures."
He explains that with regard to narratives, the prose poem has tried for 70 years now to obtain its legitimacy in the issue of naturalization and take its place in the theory of naturalization, but it has not gained its legitimacy until now due to the scarcity of good ones, and therefore we see very few distinguished writers.
As for the narratives, and the hadith of Rashid Issa, they are an extension of the prose poem and a courageous attempt to transcend the familiar forms. If the prose poem did not obtain Arab and international recognition that makes it compete with measured poetry, how can we hope that the “narratives” will gain recognition, and do they need 100 years for critics to pay attention to them? Issa wondered.
Prize jurisprudence
Issa says that he personally is not against the renewal of the normative in the poem, but the renewal needs a convincing qualitative quality of the poems and enough time for the "poetic narratives" to establish their presence and gain the conviction of the recipient.
Regarding Abu Sabih’s narrations, Issa says, “It is permissible and necessary jurisprudence, but I do not bet that it will gain recognition in the short term from literary criticism. And exalt him with great rewards.”
"Luminous Narratives" by Jamil Abu Sbeih (Al-Jazeera)
Issa points out that the future is open to contemplation and experiments, and says that narratives attract the attention of Maghreb writers, who derive ideas of change and innovation from French poetry in particular, and he added, "I can say that it is a brave and unique adventure among its two generations, but it is uniqueness with caution directed at the elite of enlightened readers that is difficult for me to understand." The general audience absorbs poetic images that resemble cinematic scenes, and the final bet remains on public taste.
And Issa concludes that the innovators are strangers, and time will do justice to them, perhaps after their departure. That is why Bishr ibn al-Mu'tamid says in his newspaper, "The eloquent writer is the one who uses words in coarse meanings, and he is the one who writes for the elite, so that the public will understand it."
Narratives with deep meaning
For his part, the critic Muhammad Al-Mashaikh, Secretary of the Jordanian Writers Association, considers that the poet Jamil Abu Sbeih is one of the pioneers of the prose poem in the Arab world and one of the first to write poetic narratives, to express in it honestly and beautifully the impact of existence on their conscience.
And he adds to Al-Jazeera Net that Abu Sobeih has a magical ability to combine symbols, metaphors, metaphors, similes, and metaphors through which he addresses elite Arab critics and readers, who quickly discover their implications.
And the sheikhs complete, "I can say that the 'narratives' are parallel in their aesthetics to the prose narration that is evident in the story and the narration, but the narration for him is fraught with images stemming from his soaring imagination and music in which tone, melody, and linguistic lexicons harmonize, whose words are derived from the latest vocabulary adopted by the Arabic language dictionaries from the international languages." .
The sheikhs believe that poetic narratives have an impact on the art of poetry and not on the poetic scene in general, due to the lack of those who are creative in its field, and because it is still alien to our cultural reality, and those who are creative in its field delve into hieroglyphs more than they dive into reality, just as poetic narratives need years and new poets closer. To reality and even a popular base is devoted.