Poetry
الذكرى
Not translated into English
Ibrahim al-Urayyid · 1931
Synopsis
The poet's first collection, printed in Baghdad. Its poems sing with fervour of nature and its charms. The author follows the Romantics, whom he had read in English before mastering the Arabic classics. He himself regarded it as an “apprentice's notebook”, the work of a poet still at the beginning, and the book did not find in the Gulf the echo he had hoped for.
Context
The book appeared in 1931 and was followed by a verse play and a translation of Khayyam's quatrains; the poet stopped publishing verse in the early fifties. Ahmad Zaki Abu Shadi, founder of the Apollo school, praised him as a defender of the resources of the Arabic language; trained on the English poets, he also founded the first modern school in Bahrain and championed the education of girls.
Who it is for
Poems in Arabic by a beginner, with no translation; they are of interest chiefly for the history of Gulf poetry.
Prizes and reception
The collection went unnoticed on publication, but it opens the work of the doyen of Bahrain's poets.
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