Poet Mohammed Al-Shameiri: To reach, you don’t have to have two feet
Yemen
Yemenite
Interview with: Mohammed Al-Mekhlafi
In a charming session, Yemeni poet, writer and doctor Mohammed Al-Shameri revealed a life journey that began in a rural childhood filled with desire and adventure, went through a painful accident that altered the course of his destiny, and culminated in a disability that ignited in him a flame of optimism and vitality, transforming into poetry and prose brimming with honesty and courage.
Al-Shameri said:
“I was born in the village of Al-Hoqueil, literally short for field. It was a village shaped by the hand of man. I mean literally: the land was not fertile. Our ancestors carved their fields in stone and clay, bordering them with rocks taken from the heart of the mountains. The result was small stony plots where the crops fought fiercely to break through the earth. Perhaps that is why, to justify my small size, I I often compared myself to the besieged plants.
And yet, I had a pampered and happy childhood, perhaps because I was the first boy after three sisters. I could swear I understood their joy at my birth and I exploited it to the fullest. Even though other boys followed until there were ten of us, I clung to my early privileges. I never took a jug of water, nor a bundle of firewood or harvest wood. My world was football, academic success and selling chocolates and gum at women’s weddings.
Few would believe that my most vivid childhood memory is the time I tried to fly off the roof of a three-story house at the age of four – or the way I applied my mother’s hair cream to my curls, trying to make them smoother, just to impress my Egyptian classmate in third grade.
About his beginnings with poetry he says:
“From my earliest years, I read the Quran and memorized most of it. I studied treatises on grammar, jurisprudence and ethics, enchanted by their rhymes and rhythm, many of which I can still recite today. At school, I was drawn to the morning assembly microphone, to memorizing and performing poetry. I remember my first big public celebration – in fourth grade – when I recited a poem by Al-Zubayri From then until the end of high school, I was always on stage.
In college, I wrote my first poem. Later, the noise of life and the weight of work distracted me. Poetry and art only came back to me through fate, when a car accident in 2007 attempted to steal my life. I have read all eras and all poets, and each text, each book has left its mark on my words in one way or another. It is no exaggeration to say that my greatest motivation has been the attachment to life, the refusal of death and the need to reclaim my days from every moment once darkened by the prohibitive fatwas of fear.
Regarding his pharmacy studies, he adds:
“Pharmacy is a science inseparable from its artistic moment. Each formula, each compound is a chemistry of interactions which reflects the first spark of a poem. I have never felt that there was a gap between my profession and my poetry.”
Of the accident that changed his life forever, he said:
“When death squeezed my hand in that accident and then moved away, I realized that I deserved nothing but life. This is what I wrote that same day. I did not lose consciousness and Asalah did not stop singing “Only my heart is yours, my beloved and my love”. I took death by the hand and carried it with me into the tumult of life.
Of the poem he wrote after the accident, he said:
Death, a gracious salvation
offered by salvation
to bodies that do not return salvation.
death,
A solemn response in eloquent language
to countless questions
we were wrong to ask.
Colloquial speech was our first trick
commit immortality.
The rules we have implemented
in the throat of love—
tightening of concrete beams
the coasts of silence,
completing the silence.
Death, the one who shook my hand in an accident,
then I left—
I threw a single song in his face:
“Only my heart is yours, my beloved, and your love…
He didn’t betray me,
Even when I forbade myself to love.
I never prefer to put songs together in one album.
How beautiful—
The rose thrown alone, at the end of the field of vision.
Defying wild grass
the laws of agricultural geometry.
Faith unleashed
of the idea of reward,
and deferred desire.
Death is so available—
in books that escape
the prison of library shelves.
Death despises numbers.
A
Two
Three
Stop.
Allah, Allah, Allah—
how beautiful cinema is,
how ugly the directors are!
Regarding the lesson he learned from his experience with disability, he said:
“The very first gain I got from disability was the government job. Since my graduation, I was turned away for a long time due to lack of opportunities. I got it immediately under the quota for the disabled. But the biggest lesson was this: reaching does not require two feet. I must confess here that my life did not change much after that, perhaps because I had always been lazy, and still am today.”
He adds:
“Many see disability as a prison. I do not deny that it can be so. But it can also open up a broader horizon than the constraints of reality and the taboos of other people’s lives. I do not say this out of pretensions of heroism, but simply because I love life. Even at fifty, I remain a child, refusing to age. I therefore live each moment as it is, sparing no effort to do so. I am deeply convinced that brooding over disability and remaining still in front of it won’t change its truth at least. And so, I live for every inch of what’s available – with all my madness.
About his poetic experience he says:
“I don’t know if I’m really a poet or not, but I’m sure I know how to express my moment without the weight of rules or government. I don’t plan, I don’t intend, and I don’t like theories either. I like categorizations or labels. I let the text take flight the way I tried to jump in my childhood – except now I don’t hold it back the way my father once did, threatening me with a rock in his hand. What I write is an impulse, a reaction, an entanglement with life. Some call it chaotic. Others call it childish: mastering the classical language and then suddenly imposing its rustic dialect. Some critics hate it, fearing that the tower of language will collapse in the local.
On the presence of women in his work, he declares:
“I have to remember what a friend noticed after reading my book “Winds in a Stubborn Scrap.” He noticed that women were present in every text, whether lyrical or otherwise. And he was right, because I am a man shaped by a woman.
As he read it, he reflected:
“Every book I’ve read has left its mark, on my face and in my words. The first novel I read was in sixth grade, when an older man who couldn’t read asked me to read Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables aloud to him. I still remember today the wonder I felt, a wonder for which I still have no explanation. As for poetry, even though I read almost everyone, I always found in the verses of Abu Al-Qasim Al-Shabbi a liberation, an elegant simplicity and an irresistible influence.
On his writing rituals, he explains:
“I have never experienced that moment of inspiration that I have heard about in the stories of many poets. In my early days, I even thought they came from another planet. I write whenever I want, whenever my emotions and interactions with life overflow. Every moment we experience can be a text. And yet, there are times when I cannot write at all, no matter how hard I try.”
Regarding his participation in festivals and cultural events, he said:
“This question sums up my very existence. I cannot sit alone. I do not remember ever asking for a moment of solitude. I find life in sharing it with others. That is why I have attended almost every literary, artistic and human rights event. Unfortunately, recent economic circumstances have prevented me from doing so, so now I choose only one event per month. I explain it all by my love for life and for people, because each person I meet strengthens my presence and brings me.
On the cultural scene in Yemen today, he says:
“I don’t believe there is a complete institutional cultural scene. What does exist are cultural elites who have at times thrived and faded at other times, depending on the political climate. During these changes, poets and writers have emerged whose marks have reached beyond the local sphere. Today, however, the scene is built on individual initiatives and voices who strive to create despite fear, hunger and unemployment. Perhaps this explains the abundance of production – where quantity prevails and quality is rare Yet, there are young writers who have managed to secure their place on the Arab and regional scene and I always remain optimistic, as long as there are those who refuse to die creatively.
About his upcoming projects, he said:
“In 2020 I published ‘Winds in a Stubborn Scrap’ – a mix of very short stories and flashes of prose. Soon a collection of short stories will be published under the title ‘I Stole My Mother’s Flowers’. I also have a novel, ‘Brown Bread’, which still needs some polishing, as well as a collection of very short stories called ‘A Star Fell Down the Aisle.’
On his poetic and human message, he summarizes:
“Writing now resembles a movement of inertia: it is neither motivated by meaning nor leads anywhere. A movement that destiny does not entail. I try to believe, but my stubborn nature does not accept the revelations that fall from above. As for my human message: never refuse a kind word to those who deserve it.”
In conclusion, he said:
“Literature, art, creativity – whether it is a text, a painting or a song – does not necessarily have to reflect the life of its creator. It can even be its opposite. Do not judge the creator, because the text itself is the real arena of criticism.”
He then read another poem.
The distance between two shoulders
is further than an impossible suspended
on the absence tablet.
The sea asks me about the years of waves—
how I walked them,
While my loss never bore
the blue of desire?
Thanks for the laugh
it left no wrinkles
on the grieving grain of sand.
Thank you, like no tree deserves.
to the whisper of a trunk
full of ancient shadow.
Through the pillow in the abandoned garden,
so my crippled madness
could sleep on his memory.
Thanks to the echo
stay up without a hat,
watch like the songs say,
and when the dawn stammers
the rooster cries in the distance
in the heights of tears.
Thanks to you, silence—
While you search the pocket of time
for the wool of mirrors,
for the winter of illusion,
for the warmth of poems,
and long—
my double desire,
like a cunning agent
write his autobiography,
smoking his pipe in retirement,
closing of the death service,
and draw his mind
on paper.
Yemen