2023-06-19 12:39:00
The Moroccan writer’s latest collection brings together the poetic meditations of this major voice in contemporary French-speaking literature, with “intact” rage.
Every week, a look at the poetic news. Find all the articles of this meeting here.
There is current material (the war in Ukraine, a stay in hospital, bereavement, the aging body) and the distillate of the poet’s meditations. Read, rather, about writing: “The hut of poetry / is also built / with three little pieces of wood / a bit special all the same / which speaks, cries / cries, sings / laughs / bleeds / dreams / self-harms / and sometimes kills.” It is that at 81 years old, Abdellatif Laâbi continues to shell, collection after collection, wisdoms of a poetic nature like the peasant sows wheat or young barley. The latest, The earth is a bitter orange, published by Castor astral this spring, is the umpteenth illustration (but not the ultimate), in a prose that is always economical but no less combative. See again: “but my rage / that of the beginnings / when I spoke / never to let go / that rage / it / remained intact.”
Remember that the writer and translator, multi-award-winning voice of the Francophonie (he received the Goncourt for poetry in 2009, among others), spent eight years in the jails of the Kingdom, before going into exile in the Paris suburbs in 1985. And from this experience of imprisoned dissidence, he draws an energy that feeds texts, often brief, to be seen as little bits of thought alternately amused, worried, informed, tender or melancholy. Again: “Only by taking / my last breath / will I finally feel / free / completely free!” Freedom for Abdellatif Laâbi, who has become a stubborn defender, there is always a lot of talk. A breadcrumb that he celebrates in “Dénouement”, an ode to the release last summer of the Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayad, imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for “apostasy” and for whom this smuggler of poetry from the Arab world (with the Anthology of Palestinian Poetry in 2022 for example) has mobilized.
Abdellatif Laâbi, The earth is a bitter orange, ed. Le Castor astral, 180 pages, 16 euros.
The extract
poetry and me
is it me
who can’t stop me
or her
who won’t let me go?
Yet I tricked
plotted
play dead
feign madness
really thought I was lost
walked away
by myself
as much as others
took me a long time
lock up
skinned myself
the skin
Memory
until the blood
Nothing helped!
Of my tricks
she was laughing the devil
as if she had for her
immaculate innocence
From the culture where I come from
the idea of original sin
spared me
how could i know
that I was going to contract it
dedicating my life
what i thought i was
the noblest of arts?
Ah! poetry
#Abdellatif #Laâbi #combative #wisdom #Liberation