Poetry
الليل والسنون الملعونة
Not translated into English
Ali al-Regeie · 1966
Synopsis
Free-verse poems in which Tripoli, under the monarchy, appears as a city of withered faces, crumbling brick houses and silences, and in which the night returns as the place of solitude and lack. The poet, who has known poverty, lends his voice to those whom the city forgets, and sets an obstinate waiting against the cursed years of the title.
Context
The collection was printed in 1966 by the Tripoli information services, a few months before the accident that cost its author his life: it was the last book published in his lifetime, after two other collections, and a posthumous volume followed in 1991. His poems adopt a form freed from inherited metre, in a deliberately simple language, and the Libyan press still republishes them for what they say about the country under the monarchy.
Who it is for
A short collection in Arabic, never translated. The verse is free, which was new in Libya, and the language remains simple: it is the subject matter that is dark.
Prizes and reception
Its author is regarded, together with Ali Sidqi Abdelkader, as one of the two initiators of free verse in Libya. This is the collection that the press republishes.