Marrakesh- The 13-year-old Omaima Sharaf stands proudly in front of her audience as she recites a poem she created in a moment of contemplation in nature, while following her movements with unmistakable admiration, the writer and writer Abdullah Darqawi, who won the Moroccan Prize for the “Book for Children and Youth.”
She talks about a bird tired of flying in a sky deserted by rainy clouds, and about a naked mountain without snow that cries in heartburn without tears, in a story that she formulated in a poetic form and transformed her words into a dramatic scene.
Omaima says in an eloquent Arabic language mixed with an Amazigh accent – in her interview with Al-Jazeera Net – that “trying to write liberates my ability to imagine; my mind grabs words from here and there, trying to weave texts and thoughts with strong feelings.”
hair effect
On a spring day, a village in the Tedli Mesfioua region of Al Haouz province, located in the foothills of the high Atlas Mountains on the outskirts of Marrakesh, turned into a pilgrimage for more than 100 young men and women, to furnish the space of a poetry writing workshop.
In an interview with Al-Jazeera Net, Abdelhak Mifrani, director of the Dar of Poetry in Marrakech – which is supervising the “Multaqa Haruf” initiative in its sixth season – says, “We feel that these buds are poets coming to the future, writing with apparent passion, and honing their own talents with the theoretical justifications they received.”
For his part, Darqawi considered, in an interview with Al-Jazeera Net, that “poetry is the most capable of influencing the soul, with weights and musical rhythm, the beauty of words, and the splendor of style, and when it comes from a young person with a bright heart, the effect is stronger.”
And he adds, “I found all of this in the writings of Omaima – and others – who were able to distinguish themselves in the era of phones, the decline in the level of reading, and the transformation of their poetic creations that they memorized by heart into dramatic and influential scenes.”
Cautious daring
It is customary for an adult to summon the child who inhabits him as he weaves the worlds of a creative text, as the poet and critic Mifrani explains. How does he write “an adult” for a “child” and “a child” for an “adult”, and one influences the other and vice versa, amazes him and stirs his potential through literature ?
Omaima the young, creative, does not dare to describe what she writes of poetry, stories and plays as literature, because she is still in her infancy. She aspires to be like Darqawi or the Moroccan child Abeer Azim, the youngest Arab writer, author of the award-winning novel “Sun the Size of a Palm”.
Omaima spends her time between home and school in her village of Ait Haddou in the Tidili region, and in her free time she goes to the library or goes out into nature, to read a book or sing a poem. It is a dialogue with oneself or with its surroundings that makes her feel an indescribable warmth, according to her expression, and her passion for contemplating the methods of the Holy Qur’an and seeing the biographies of the first and the others refines her talent.
“Omaima’s writings are amazing,” says Darqawi, who drew the first Moroccan children’s dictionary.
new worlds
Omaima attends poetry writing workshops regularly at the Dar of Poetry in Marrakech (one of which was moved near her village), which is framed by experienced critics and poets such as the critic Abd al-Latif al-Sakhiri, the poet Mustafa Gholman and the writer Fatima al-Zahraa Rawah, and there she explores the worlds of poetry, and compares what exists and what can exist. .
Mifrani notes that “the techniques of poetic writing, voice, and diction are initial principles on the horizon of a broader openness to the realms of creative writing.”
He adds, “Developing creative writing skills and fertilizing imaginary faculties produces innovative, creative and fertile texts that seek the horizon of the future outside tutelage, both literary and social.”
As for Darqawi, he points out that the renaissance and success of nations begins from childhood, just as construction begins from the ground up, and whenever a child reads a large number of stories and poems, his talent for writing matures and he becomes fertile in narrative creativity.
Delicious fatigue
When Omaima finishes a poem, thought, or story, she feels tired, but tired and delicious at the same time, as she puts it.
“When I read what I write, it becomes interesting and motivates me to continue to draw from the vast pool of culture,” says Omaima.
After completing his interesting dialogue with Omaima, Darqawi says, “The writing of adults in the spirit of the young will remain enjoyable for them at the same time, and the search for new worlds in that writing will continue despite the presence of distractions.”
As for Mifrani, he points out that “what is happening between the child Omaima and the writer Darqawi in terms of weaving thin threads, and the mutual influence between two worlds, is an example of an attempt to represent the worlds of imaginary writing, taking into account the limits of what the aesthetics of reception presents.”