Biography
Ahmed Barakat was born in 1960 in Casablanca, Morocco. He worked as a journalist for the Moroccan newspaper Bayane Al Yawm until he died in 1994 at the age of thirty-four. He published two poetry collections, including Abadan lan Ussai’da Azzilzal (Never will I sustain the schism). His poems “Afterwards,” “Black Pain,” and “The Torn Flag” were translated by Norddine Zouitni in 2012 and published in Poems for the Millennium, an anthology of traditional and experimental literary texts by North African writers. He was known for championing the prose poem in Morocco and is considered the first writer in the country to write a manifesto defending and celebrating this poetic form. The manifesto, titled “We Are Diggers of Wells, or the Unsigned Manifesto,” was written in 1993 during a poetry festival of Salé and has since been known as the Salé prose poem manifesto. In his poetry, the writer reflected on the urban cosmopolitan experience, work that is often regarded as a tribute to the city of Casablanca.
Poetry Collections
Abadan lan Ussai’da Azzilzal (Manshourat Ittihah Kuttab al Maghreb, Rabat 1991); Dafatir al Khusran(Manshourat Ittihah Kuttab al Maghreb, Rabat, 1994)
