NEW POEMS BY ABDALLAH ZRIKA

The Moroccan poet Abdallah Zrika published a new collection of poems titled “Ibratou Lwoujoud” – “The needle of Being.” Abdellah Zrika, to me, is the Bukowski of Morocco in the sense that his poetry is characterized by the integration of everyday language into a literature the academicians envisage as belonging to a higher culture. From a thematic perspective, Zrika and Bukowski are worlds apart. Zrika’s themes are more existential and metaphysical; they deal with the existence of man not as the center of the universe, but rather one of its organic components; Zrika does not see man as having more value than other organically integral elements of this world such as, say, insects, birds, and plants. Through those trimmed and textured lines of words that stack up to form his poetry, Zrika tries to make sense of his world through language and emotions. The correlation between words and life is palpable in his work; he himself says: “words are a precious thing; everything can live in them… and especially poetry, the ultimate threshold of words.” The power of Zrika’s words landed him in jail for two years when six of his poems were classified by the Moroccan government as being “morally dangerous.” Pierre Joris translated some of Zrika’s poetry which was published in two American literary reviews: Soft Target and Bombay Gin. The French poet Bernard Noel also translated some of his books. In addition to “The Needle of Being,” Zrika also published “Dance of the head and the rose,” 1977; “Rires de l’arbre à palabres,” l’Harmattan, 1982 ; “Black Candles,”  La Différence (Paris), 1998 ; “Petites Proses,” L’Escampette, 1998 ; “Echelles de la Métaphysique,” L’Escampette, 2000 ; “The Colour of Distance,” ed. Stefan Weidner, Beck Verlag, 2000.