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Samih Al-Qasim: 'the other half of the orange' Samih Al-Qasim, a Palestinian Druze poet known across the Arab world for his nationalist writing, died last week after a long battle with cancer
The death last week of renowned Palestinian poet Samih Al-Qasim passed without noise. There was mostly silent mourning for Samih the human being and the values his poetry represented. Some commentators related the declining interest in his poetry in Egypt to the decline of interest in the Palestinian issue. Others have compared his impact with the fame of his Palestinian contemporary Mahmoud Darwish, who received more attention in his early years. Few people noticed that Al-Qasim had not produced any new poetry in the past 20 years. The older generation knew Al-Qasim through his resistance songs performed by Lebanese singer and composer Marcel Khalifa, Julia Botrous and Sabreen band. But his poetry did not change even though the singers who performed his lyrics developed and tended to become more to experimental and adventurous. Al-Qasim could not do that and paid the price of experiments and the transformation of Arabic poetry. He renounced the roar of fame very early. Darwish, who called Samih 'the other half of the orange', was very aware of the mechanisms of stardom and drew a clear picture of his relationship with his audience and kept writing embellished poetry unlike Samih, who did not develop his poetic style. Unlike the so-called poets of resistance, such as Maeen Bassisso and Mahmoud Darwish, who lived and worked in Egypt, Samih did not live in Egypt in his early years, and it never represented an alternate home for him. Al-Qasim was not recognised as great poet in Egypt until his last years. He did not get a proper recognition until he was commemorated by the Egyptian Writers Union and was granted the Naguib Mahfouz Award, but even this did not get much coverage except in the nationalist newspapers. For all of these reasons, it is very hard to find any reference to Al-Qasim, or references to his poetry, on the Facebook pages of young poets. For them he is a text from the past and does not engage any of the present, and his texts are harmless as he did get involved in wars with anyone because he wanted to be forgiving and tolerant. http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/109171.aspx
