Poet Dr. Muhammad Al-Shamiri: Reaching does not require two feet
Yemen
Yamanat
During a pleasant session, the Yemeni doctor, writer and poet Muhammad Al-Shamiri revealed his experience, which began with a rural childhood full of nostalgia and adventures, went through a painful accident that changed the course of his life and ended with a disability that ignited in him the flame of optimism and life, so that all these stages were embodied in his poetry and texts full of honesty and boldness.
The interview was conducted by: Muhammad Al-Mekhlafi
Al-Shamiri said: I was born in the village of Al-Haqil, which is a diminutive of the word “field”, which is the village that people built with their own hands. I say that literally, because it was not fertile land. Instead, our ancestors created their agricultural fields by collecting gravel and clay, then marked them with stones they brought from the depths of the mountains. These were small lands, mostly covered with gravel, so the crops suffered greatly before emerging from the seeds and rising to the surface of the earth. Perhaps to justify my small size, I looked like this plant under siege. However, I had a comfortable and pampered childhood, perhaps because I was the first male after three sisters. I’m almost certain I understood their happiness and took full advantage of it. As the males followed one another until our number reached ten, I remained in my old manner. I had no bottle of water with me, no bundle of crops or firewood, and I practiced nothing other than football, academic excellence, and selling chocolate and gum at women’s weddings. Maybe no one will believe that what I remember most from my childhood is the time I tried to fly off the roof of the third floor when I was only four years old, and also how I applied my mother’s hair cream to make my curly hair softer, just to impress my Egyptian classmate in third grade.
Regarding his beginnings in poetry, he said: Since my childhood, I read the Quran and memorized most of it, and I studied grammar and jurisprudential and behavioral systems, and I was attracted by its rhymes, and to this day I still memorize much of it. At school, I loved the radio microphone, memorizing and reciting poetry. I remember the first big public party I attended. I was in fourth grade then and presented a poem by Al-Zubairi, and my participation continued until the end of high school. In college, I wrote my first poem, then found myself busy with the hustle and bustle of life and work, and nothing prepared me for poetry, literature and the arts except fate, when the road accident in 2007 tried to steal my life. I have read different poets at all times, and each text, poet or book has certainly impacted my letters in one way or another. It is no exaggeration to say that my greatest motivation is to cling to life and reject death, and to compensate my life for every moment of fear of forbidden fatwas.
About his study of pharmacy, he said: Pharmacy is a science inseparable from its artistic moment, and each combination of drugs is an addiction and interaction similar to the first moment of a poem, so I never felt that there was a dividing distance between my specialty and my poem.
As for the accident that dramatically changed his life, he said: When death shook my hand by accident and left, I realized that I only deserved life. So I wrote the same day. I didn’t lose consciousness and Asala didn’t stop singing “Apart from her is my heart, my love and your love.” I held the hand of death and carried it with me into the riot of life.
About his poetic text written after the accident, he said:
Death, greetings
Salvation throws it on the bodies that do not give peace
Death is an eloquent answer to many questions we have mistakenly asked
Slang was our first thing
To achieve immortality…!
The rules that we instilled in the throat of love
Concrete tightens the shores of silence
Let the silence be complete…!
Death who shook my hand an accident and left
I gave him a song:
Apart from her is my heart, my love and your love
He didn’t obey me when I forbade love
I don’t prefer to collect songs in one album
What a beautiful…
A rose lying alone, in the distance
Weeds that rebel against the laws of agricultural engineering
A faith free from the idea of reward and deferred desire…!
Death is very available
In the books escaping from the office shelves
Death doesn’t like numbers
A
You
rich
….
……
………
STOP.
God God God
What a beautiful cinema
What ugliest directors…!
Regarding the lesson he learned from his experience with disability, he said: The first gain of disability is the professional degree, which I had been deprived of since graduating due to lack of opportunities, so I obtained it directly under the disability quota. The biggest lesson is that you don’t have to reach two feet. I admit here that my life didn’t change much after that, maybe because I was lazy before that and I still am now.
He adds: “Many people see disability as a prison, and I don’t deny that, but it is perhaps a more spacious space than the restrictions of reality and the prohibitions of other people’s lives. I say this not to claim heroism, but simply because I love life, and I am still a child at fifty years old, refusing to grow up. So I live the moment as it is and I spare no effort to do so. I have the firm conviction that thinking about disability for a long time and dwelling on it will not change its reality at all, so I live within the limits of possibility with all my madness.
About his poetic experience he says: I don’t know if I’m a poet or not, but I’m sure I’m good at expressing my moment without rules or theories governing the text. I don’t plan, I don’t intend, nor do I like stereotypes and naturalization. I let the text fly like I had tried to jump in my childhood, and I didn’t stop it like my father once stopped me and threatened me with a stone in his hand. What I write is an emotion, an interaction with life and a shock with it, so some call it chaotic, while others say it is a childish text that masters classical Arabic and suddenly imposes its village dialect. Some critics don’t like it for fear that the language trick will fall into localism, but I love every text, even the weakest ones.
He adds about the presence of women in his texts: I must note what a friend said while reading my book “Winds in a Stubborn Scrap”, when he remarked that women are present in every text, whether flirtatious or otherwise, and I find him right, for I am a man made by a woman.
About his readings, he says: Every book I have read has left an impact on my face and on my profession. The first novel I read, I was in sixth grade. An old man who didn’t know how to read asked me to read “Les Miserables” by Victor Hugo to him. I still remember today my inexplicable astonishment. In terms of poetry, even though I read almost everyone, I saw in the poetry of Abou Al-Qasim Al-Chebbi a freedom, an elegant simplicity and an influence that I could not resist.
About writing rituals, he says: I haven’t experienced a moment of revelation because I’ve read a lot of poets, to the point that when I started I thought they came from another planet. I write when I want, when my emotions and my interactions with life come out. Every moment we live can be a text. There may be times when I can’t write even if I try.
Regarding his participation in festivals and cultural events, he said: This question represents my entire existence. I can’t sit alone and I don’t remember ever asking for some alone time. I find life in sharing with people, which is why I have participated in most literary, artistic and legal activities. Unfortunately, recent economic conditions prevent this, which is why I resort to one event each month. I explain all this by my love of life and my love of people. Each person enhances my presence and brings me.
As for the cultural scene in Yemen today, he says: I don’t believe there is a complete institutional cultural scene, but there are cultural elites who have been active in certain periods and failed in others, depending on political circumstances. During this, poets and writers appeared who left their mark beyond the local area. Today, the scene relies on individual initiatives and voices trying to create despite fear, hunger and unemployment. This perhaps explains the abundance of production, dominated by quantity and rarely by quality. However, there are young writers who have found their place in Arab and regional countries. I’m always optimistic as long as there are those who refuse to die creatively.
Regarding his upcoming projects, he says: In 2020, I published the collection “Winds in a Stubborn Scrap”, which is a mixture of very short stories and flashes. Soon a collection of texts entitled “I stole my mother’s misfortunes” will be published. I also have a novel called “Brown Lives” that needs reviewing, in addition to a collection of very short stories called “A Star Fell in the Alley.”
Concerning his poetic and humanitarian message, he summarizes it by saying: Writing now resembles an inertial movement, not animated by meaning and leading to nothing, a movement not approved by destiny. I try to believe it, but stubborn nature does not recognize gifts falling from above. Humanly: do not spare a nice word that someone deserves.
In conclusion, he said: Literature, art and creativity, whether it is a text, a painting or a song, do not necessarily have to be an exact copy of the creator’s life, but rather their opposite, so do not judge the creator, because the text is the field of criticism.
Then he read another poetic text:
The distance between two shoulders
Beyond the impossible is waiting
On the absence table
The sea asks me about the years of waves
How did she move?
Why did my loss wear the blue of wishes?
Thank you for the laughter that didn’t make her wrinkles move
Sad grain of sand
Thank you as befits a tree
His stuffed trunk whispers the ancient shadow
Thank you for the cushion that the garden left behind
So that my paralyzing madness falls asleep in his memory
Thanks for the echo
He stands alone without a hat
He goes to bed late, as the songs say
And when the dawn stutters
The rooster cries in the distance amidst tears
Thank you, silence
And you look at the time module
About mirror wool
About Winter of Illusion
About the warmth of poems
And the nostalgia
My double nostalgia
As a genius agent
He writes his autobiography
He smokes his pipe in retirement
Ends the service of death
He captures his soul in paper.
Yemen