Adonis (poet)
Ali Ahmad Said Esber (Arabic: علي أحمد سعيد إسبر, North Levantine: Arabic pronunciation: [ˈʕali ˈʔaħmad saˈʕiːd ˈʔesbeɾ]; born 1 January 1930), also known by the pen name Adonis or Adunis (Arabic: أدونيس Arabic pronunciation: [ʔadoːˈniːs]), is a Syrian poet, essayist and translator. Maya Jaggi, writing for The Guardian stated "He led a modernist revolution in the second half of the 20th century, "exerting a seismic influence" on Arabic poetry comparable to T.S. Eliot's in the anglophone world."
Adonis أدونيس | |
|---|---|
Adonis 12 May 2011 | |
| Born | Ali Ahmad Said Esber 1 January 1930 Al Qassabin, Latakia, Alawite State (Part of Mandatory Syria) |
| Pen name | Adonis |
| Occupation | Poet, writer, literary critic, editor |
| Language | Arabic |
| Nationality | Syrian |
| Period | Contemporary |
| Genres | Essay, poem |
| Literary movement | Modernism, avant-garde, surrealism |
| Notable works | The Songs of Mihyar the Damascene, The Static and the Dynamic |
| Notable awards | Bjørnson Prize 2007 Goethe Prize 2011 |
Adonis's publications include twenty volumes of poetry and thirteen of criticism. His dozen books of translation to Arabic include the poetry of Saint-John Perse and Yves Bonnefoy, and the first complete Arabic translation of Ovid's "Metamorphoses" (2002). His multi-volume anthology of Arabic poetry ("Dīwān ash-shi'r al-'arabī"), covering almost two millennia of verse, has been in print since its publication in 1964.
A perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Adonis has been described as the greatest living poet of the Arab world.