Muhammad al-Maghout
Syrian poet, playwright and journalist, a pioneer of the prose poem and free verse in Arabic
The poet of bitter satire who freed the Arabic poem from meter and rhyme.
Muhammad al-Maghout was born in 1934 in the town of Salamiyah (Hama Governorate) into a rural Ismaili family. He left school early, and in 1955 was imprisoned for his membership in the Syrian Social Nationalist Party; in prison he wrote his first poems on cigarette papers and met the poet Adonis.
He worked as a journalist for Syrian and Lebanese newspapers, and published his first collection, "Huzn fi Daw' al-Qamar" (Sadness in the Moonlight, 1959), followed by "A Room with Millions of Walls" (1964), "Joy Is Not My Profession" (1970) and "The Red Bedouin" (2006). He is regarded as a pioneer of the prose poem and free verse in Arabic: his poetry broke with meter and rhyme, blending bitter satire with depictions of social misery and criticism of authority and hypocrisy.
For the theatre he collaborated with Duraid Lahham and Nihad Qal'i on some of the most famous Arab political plays: "Day'at Tishrin" (October Village), "Ghurbah" (Exile), "Ka'sak ya Watan" (A Toast to the Homeland) and "Shaqa'iq al-Nu'man" (Anemones); he also wrote the screenplay of the film "Al-Hudud" (The Borders, 1982). A line often quoted from his work: "There is only one perfect crime: to be born an Arab."
He married the poet Saniya Salih and mourned her in moving poems after her death. In 2005 he received the Syrian Order of Merit, and the Sultan Al Owais Poetry Prize a few months before his death. He died in Damascus on 3 April 2006, aged seventy-two.
