Taha Muhammad Ali
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Taha Muhammad Ali (Arabic: طه محمد علي) (born 1931 in Saffuriyya, Galilee) is a leading figure in contemporary Palestinian poetry.
[edit] Displacement
He fled to Lebanon with his family when he was seventeen after their village came under heavy bombardment during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. One year later, he slipped back across the border and settled in Nazareth, where he has lived ever since. In the fifties and sixties, he sold souvenirs during the day to Christian tourists and studied poetry (everything from classical Arabic to contemporary American free-verse) at night.
Still owner of a small souvenir and antiques shop which he operates with his sons, he writes vividly of his childhood in Saffuriyya and of the political upheavals he has survived. His translator Gabriel Levin has described Muhammad Ali's style as "forceful" and "in short lines of varying beats with a minimum of fuss and a rich array of images drawn primarily from his village life."
[edit] Bibliography
- (2006) So What: New & Selected Poems, 1971–2005. ISBN 1-55659-245-0.
- (2000) Never Mind: Twenty Poems and a Story. ISBN 965-90125-2-7.
- Fourth Qasida.
- Fooling the Killers.
- Fire in the Convent Garden.
[edit] Anthologies
- (2006) Poet's Choice. ISBN 0-15-101356-X.
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