The Poetic Preoccupations of the Generation of Good Tidings
Sikka Platform: Alsadig Yaseen
The written word has played a pivotal role in motivating Sudanese people toward a sustained engagement with questions of freedoms, rights, democracy, and the rule of law — by documenting the spaces of interaction among civil society actors, cultural figures, writers, and artists along the path toward democratic civilian transition in Sudan.
We turn here to the role of poets and their output in answering questions about the Sudanese people's future, through a survey of poetic experiences that have animated Sudanese narratives and public consciousness.
The Poet Ahmad Mahir
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On the relationship between the arts, culture, and his personal life, the young Sudanese poet Ahmad Mahir says that he had previously written a volume documenting his connection to the arts and culture, and the influence of the arts on his personal life across many different and varied associations. He regarded this conversation as "a generous opportunity" for reflection — both from a "realistic and revolutionary" standpoint, and from an "institutionalising" standpoint — aimed at consolidating the gains of the Sudanese Revolution, in his own words.
Ahmad Mahir states that "the arts in Sudanese life — simple and complex in their homogeneous and contested composition — gave rise to a collective, thinking mind that drew on the movement of modern development in tools and means, and mobilised absolute values as a distinctive individual Sudanese right, and as a conscious human element connected to human existence" — against what he termed "the extremist ideological totalitarianism that brutalises the human being, his values, the homeland, and its resources."
Mahir explains that his human, emotional, intellectual, cultural, political, academic, social, and practical engagements define him as a "poet," adding with a note of qualification: "For what, in my long life, is poetry but words written and spoken, empty of meaning, thought, and feeling — a manufactured dissemination of human expressive output at its loftiest degrees of elevation?"
Mahir recounts what resembles a dialogue between himself and his mother, Alawiya — a literacy teacher — in which he says to her: "Mum... I speak with a feeling that no one understands me. What should I do?" She replies: "Write!" He still remembers her gaze as she pointed him toward the answer in a single word. He adds: "And so writing became my weapon and my refuge."
The young poet Ahmad Mahir notes that his poetic journey began at Omdurman Ahlia University — or "the pride of Sudanese consciousness," that "(strange being)," as one of the university's sons, professors, and its dean, Professor Nasir Yasin, calls it. Mahir adds: "I recorded in the book — its two covers opened for inscription — (Al-Ahlia... A Full Life): 'Al-Ahlia and the Rebel, the Tale of Defiance, the Lyrical Opinion, the Street Forum, the Poetry Movement as Horizontal Collective Leadership, the Congregation of the Aggrieved, the Rabi' Abd al-Majid Forum, and the Theatre and House of Mahjoub Sharif.'"
The young poet draws attention to the "dense diversity of cultural presence in Sudanese society, and the vigilant, living conscience planted as melody, theatre, poetry, painting, sculpture, narrative, story, and novel — suffused with Sufi spirituality and breathtaking nature," which he says made Sudanese society "a bulwark against extremism, violence, tyranny, and the destruction of life." He notes that he expressed all of this "with full courage, absolute faith, and great sacrifice," burdens that will weigh upon those who carry pens — "to articulate and glorify it wherever our station may be, enveloped by its values: freedom, peace, and justice."
On the poetic experiences and environments that contributed to shaping and developing his poetic formation and that of his generation, Ahmad Mahir explains that he was exposed in his upbringing to Arab poetic experiences, including those of Ahmad Matar, Faruq Juwayda, Nizar Qabbani, Iliya Abu Madi, Mahmoud Darwish, Karim Al-Iraqi, Nazik Al-Mala'ika, Ghassan Kanafani, Muzaffar Al-Nawwab, Al-Abnudi, and all "the names that immortalised their presence in poetic and human memory," in his words. He adds: "Yet one poem was always memorised and ever-present in my mind since I was nine years old: 'O Our People, O Father Who Loved Us' by Mahjoub Sharif — instilled in me, along with my siblings, by my noble Ansari father, the emigrant poet and struggling, determined Aghabsh, beside whom I walked, shoulder to shoulder, after all these years in the streets of the Revolution, from Omdurman to every corner of Sudan."
Ahmad Mahir elaborates on his bond with Mahjoub Sharif: "I participated on the stage of Mahjoub Sharif's home after his passing, reading from the collection Unfuwan (Defiance) a number of texts, accompanied by my friend Mr. Abd al-Rahman Abd al-Fadil — the poet, the astute interlocutor, the intellectual — and in the presence of Iman Adam and the father-figure, educator Professor Azhari Muhammad Ali. I thought myself at the time a guest in their presence, come to draw from the flow of their meanings, before they called me to the platform." "Azhari remarked then that had Mustafa Sayyid Ahmad been present, he would have breathed his melody and voice into what we had written. From that moment on, poetry became my clarity, and whatever remains of me belongs to the people," Mahir added.
(2)
"In a wondrous scene above the sands of Okaz in the noble Kordofan — Bride of the Sands — and her heart (Khor Taqat) and her singular people, I witnessed a cosmic poet whose head was crowned with grey, yet whose heart was young, pouring into our souls and minds the Nile of pure, devoted Sudanese poetic words, and an overflowing patriotic longing" — this was Azhari, whose words had covered the walls of corridors, students' rooms, and spaces of activity in writing, and here he was, manifest as a voice, in flesh and blood, with his familiar elegance and his formidable simplicity, said Ahmad Mahir of the poet Azhari.
Mahir returned in memory to the day of the martyrdom of medical student Mahjoub Al-Taj, during the outbreak of the glorious December Revolution, saying: "Young people gathered on Airport Street before the entrance of the martyr's home. They were youths, full of grief, anger, and courage, yet lacking the words for expression — so they opened their phones and began chanting the words of Azhari." He adds: "Azhari — standing on the stage of the Sit-in Square — I watched from a distance this time, and from the depth, every time." Mahir recalls Azhari's counsel during his participation in an event for medical students at the University of Khartoum: that they, as writers, should attend to lyric poetry, and that their words should never depart from their consciousness, conduct, and cause — so as to attain "coherence." He continues: "For the majesty of the poem is a natural presence when Azhari speaks, and the beauty of feeling is boundless when the spirit carries it — and how could the Sudanese, in their revolution, not have someone like him, or not be distinguished by all this radiance?"
Ahmad Mahir regards their generation of poets as fortunate to have belonged to a generation of "greats," describing his own generation as "the generation that triumphed over the wretchedness of the age." He elaborates: "Our contemporaries were Mahjoub Sharif, Azhari Muhammad Ali, Hamid, Al-Qaddal, Mahjoub Kabbalo, Al-Faitouri, Wuhayb Bakri, Uthman Bushra, Mustafa Sand, Abd al-Qadir Al-Kitiyabi, Hashim Siddiq, Umar Al-Mamkun, and Ibrahim Al-Nayal — and those who followed with singular beauty: Atif Khayri, Babikir Al-Wasila, Hatim Al-Kinani, Ma'mun Al-Talab, and Badr al-Din Salih Issa — and a memory teeming with names whose weight will overwhelm the history of critics to come."
And since their generation drank from these "sweet rivers" — as the young poet Ahmad Mahir puts it — he sees no wonder in the brilliance of: Bashir Abu Sin, Muhammad Al-Sheikh, Muhammad Abd Al-Bari, Hani Ismail Al-Rahhal, Rashid Muhammad Abd Al-Wahhab, Muhammad Abd Al-Qadir Musa, Rani Farah, Mubashir Al-Jabal, Muhammad Al-Mu'ayyad Al-Majdhub, Ahmad Al-Yamani, Amjad Ismail, Mu'adh Awad, Uthman Jabra, Muhammad Al-Muzli, and Mahmoud Wad Al-Khawiya (may God have mercy on him) — who gave him the epithet "the young Faitouri" — among many other names which, he notes, were not limited to young men alone; among those who "shone in their gatherings and in their hearts" were: Wi'am Kamal, Mahasin Jufun, Bahitha Uthman, Rita Saber, Makarin Jamil, Marfa', Ala Jamal ("the Carnation Feminine"), Tobiyan Abu Sin, Iman Mutawakkil, and many others. Ahmad Mahir adds: "Sudan is the country of poets, male and female — and poetry flows through us like water and air."
(3)
On the relationship between art and the causes of change, the young poet says that "poetic experiences have become projects, and young people have become poetic, literary, and artistic symbols whose roots have extended beyond the Sudanese sky into beautiful human horizons, from which East and West draw — and which have been rendered into linguistic and encyclopaedic translations." He notes that "this is not poetry alone; the short story is present in its forms and with its writers, such as Wiqqas Al-Sadiq, Muwafi Yusuf, and Uthman Al-Sheikh; the novel has a dense, expanding presence with writers such as Munjad Bakhus and Hasan Bakri; and the artists include Ammar Abd Allah, Mahir Ali, Abd Al-Azim Abd Al-Basit, Abu Arab, Muhammad Abbu, the young Amir, Tasabih (Beeha), and Mus'ab Al-Jazuli." "The remarkable list grows long — an entire army of poets, artists, writers, and intellectuals who carry the banner of their predecessors in a natural continuation of the richness of Sudanese feeling," Ahmad Mahir adds.
Mahir says that "the will of peoples is ignited by those who inspire them — poets, artists, theatre-makers, righteous men of religion, men of culture, journalism, politics, civil society, and teachers," noting that the educated classes bear "the foremost share of historical responsibility." "This expansive narrative of interpretations requires culture as a social foundation upon which awareness is built — an awareness that embraces acceptance of the other and purposeful dialogue," Mahir adds.
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On the memories of the Sit-in Square at General Command Headquarters, and what it represented as a vast space for arts and culture, Ahmad Mahir says: "I was living the Sudanese poem in every movement and stillness — in the tent of Hamid, the tent of Mustafa Sayyid Ahmad, the mural of Mahjoub Sharif, in the square of the Electoral Commission and in Ash'a — in every archived detail of those fifty-seven days, alive forever in the hearts of every Sudanese who tasted and drew from it, who knew it and so remained bound to his people, his land, and his history." He adds: "Ahmad Mahir was nothing but a drop in a human, artistic, and poetic Nile that overflowed and gathered."
We asked the poet Ahmad Mahir about his view of the experience of poems being transformed into revolutionary chants through collective theatrical performance, and how he sees poems being lived within a wide public space. He answered that he sees it as: "ever-renewing, wondrous, rich, and more poetic than the sensibility of any artist — reaching the point of dissolution and aesthetic wonder in the presence of life in its meanings, its forms, its people, and its instruments — until the dividing line between the I and the We ceased to exist."
The young poet Ahmad Mahir views the celebration of death, life, the human being, feeling, sense, emotion, thought, values, experience, and revolution as an "existential celebration that cannot be severed." Yet the literature of tragedy, in Mahir's view, expresses "tragic reality as realist literature," while "the literature of revolution — if the term is permissible — is a fantastical, dreaming literature, departing from reality in its longing and desire, yet connected to 'the movement of daily dust' — Azhari's phrase for the popular movement in general." Mahir adds: "And from this point — the meeting point of the real and the imagined, the tragic and the dreaming, the popular and the revolutionary — inspiration springs."
On the role of poetry in confronting the causes of peoples, Mahir says that "poetry was, is, and will always be the first guardian of the causes of peoples."
Mahir discusses the value of "the cause" in poetic experience, saying that the question has been dialectical since the very beginnings of poetry and writing, and shall continue to be. He sees the debate over artistic value as revolving around an objective value, and that the human cause — in its personal, emotional, patriotic, and religious dimensions, and all their branches and faces — requires "an artistic vessel to contain it, present it, and discuss it emotionally and intellectually," in his words.
Mahir cites the answer of Zariyab Azhari (may God have mercy on him) to this question before the December Revolution: that "our crisis is a crisis of the receiver — the other partner of the text and of creativity."
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Mahir believes that the critical movement is what determines whether the poetic experience connects to causes or breaks away from them. Criticism — in its conception and its tools — contributes to the development of poetic experiences and to the exploration of the aesthetic and thematic authenticity of the poetic text (poetics, as Mahir terms it). This is subject, in his view, to the new spaces for Sudanese creativity within the society, policies, laws, and institutions that nurture, develop, celebrate, showcase, and protect both creativity and the creative individual — in their movement and their influence.
Mahir says that the current conditions in Sudan "cannot do without literature, poetry, and art in general, to address the inherited and contemporary imbalances in the structure of consciousness, and to breathe a new spirit that creates and fortifies the shared dream — for immediate stability and a bright future that erases the ugly face of failure and ruin."
Mahir cites a text from the collection Unfuwan (2016): "Set me ablaze like a punctured tyre... on the street of the august palace" — saying that the connection between this text and the subsequent revolutionary popular movement rendered "the feeling a hair's breadth between imagination and reality, and between the two, interpretation finds no seat," in his words.
Mahir believes that "the revolution of literature and the masses' engagement with revolutionary literature produced the popular revolution." He notes that "the process of conceptual radicalisation of the social components is at the very heart of progressive literature that aspires to a better tomorrow." For expression — in Mahir's conviction — precedes change, and radicalisation is the path of intellectual and emotional enlightenment, in his formulation.
Mahir adds: "In the light of this dialectic, the revolutionary reality, the digital age, and the givens of modernity, we are promised abundant and rich interpretations of post-modernist and post-revolutionary literature." "The poetic experiences of my generation — the Generation of Victory — are a national labour that has given birth to, and will continue to give birth to, more creative men and women who nourish the human experience in its entireties and its minutiae," Mahir concludes.
The Poet Mu'awiya Ali
(1)
The young poet Mu'awiya Ali points to the connection between culture, in all its dimensions of Sudanese life, and Sufism in general — as well as to the ancient tales, the stories of grandmothers (habubat), the myths, and the old games that carry within them a musical and poetic structure — noting that these formed a large part of the poets' inner world. Mu'awiya says that the musical sounds from the earliest stages of upbringing were what constructed for him the first building block of writing, with poetry permeating the inner depths through reading the poets and through the stage of writing for the beloved, in his words. Poetry — in Mu'awiya's view — needs no road by which to enter the poet's life; it is like a gracious, handsome guest who arrives without appointment or prior permission. "Through all these elements the general concept of poetry was formed within me," Mu'awiya adds.
On the relationship between poetry and reality, Mu'awiya notes the growing awareness of a range of artistic and literary themes amid the blossoming of political consciousness in universities, and the emergence of a mode of resistance within the university. He believes the relationship between poetry and reality to be "a complementary relationship" — that reality and its subjects are "an essential part of shaping the poetic experience of poets and of the poem itself," in Mu'awiya's words. The young poet believes that the birth of the poem within the university environment "granted it maturity and made it more receptive to reality," noting that it "developed new tools to keep pace with the explosive level of awareness in the university environment." All these factors led — in Mu'awiya's view — to "the formation of a poem of resistance, conscious of its impulses and interactive with its surroundings," as well as the formation of spaces for free expression — particularly with "the escalation of acts of resistance in the student movement across universities" — which gave the literary movement greater latitude than in times of political stagnation, when symbolism predominated in the resistant texts produced in university life, owing to the authority's control and its restriction of spaces for writing, in Mu'awiya's account. He explains: "From this reality, the text began to be influenced by factors affecting its maturation, and so it took up the themes of liberation from constraint, and the themes preoccupying public political, social, and economic opinion and the poem entered a phase of confrontation with reality" adding that it "became increasingly confrontational as the social condition matured and the Sudanese street engaged with the ideas of freedom and democracy, until these ideas covered a vast space in poetic output and texts."
(2)
Mu'awiya Ali points to the poetic schools of Muhammad Al-Hasan Salim Hamid, Mahjoub Sharif, Al-Qaddal, and Azhari Muhammad Ali, saying they created a major impact on the poetic scene and contributed to "the entrenchment of the Sudanese Revolution in the Sudanese conscience and in the directions, experiences, and thematic choices of young poets, and their inclination to break through the barriers of censorship" citing the words of poet Azhari Muhammad Ali: "A generation passes the banner to a generation."
The poetic experience in general — for Mu'awiya Ali — is "a continuous, mutually supporting experience, unbroken from its historical development and from preceding poetic experiences." Poetic lives, in his view, constituted a foundational pillar in the construction of new experiences. Mu'awiya says of the experience of poet Azhari Muhammad Ali that it is "a panorama of a vast, lived poetic heritage" — in addition to the experiences of poets Muhammad Al-Hasan Salim Hamid, Mahjoub Sharif, and Muhammad Taha Al-Qaddal — which "formed a stimulating environment for the output of young people," in Mu'awiya's words. "Through those experiences, poetry carved out new lives for direct interaction and for the text's inhabitation of the public sphere" — or what Mu'awiya defines as the phase of "the text's flight and the space of its interaction": whether that space be the poet's own inner stirrings and reverberations, or the auditory domain of the text and the poem's passage from the private sphere to the public space — when the poetic text transcends the poet and reaches general maturity, with ownership of the text transferred to the audience.
Poetry — for Mu'awiya — is not obligated to address public causes, but "it acquires its vitality in interaction with the surrounding reality." While some poetic experiences are anchored in specific causes, Mu'awiya believes this neither augments nor diminishes the poetic experience in terms of the poem's richness and quality — for poetry, in his conception, is "an answer to the poet's psychological state and his vision of his surroundings." He clarifies that he is drawn to poetic experiences that engage with and confront the causes of peoples, viewing these as "a sincere attempt to reflect the collective feeling toward a specific cause, as opposed to conveying sensations and images as accessible, undemanding matters." Mu'awiya says that causes are, in his poetic experience, a primary driver and motivating force in the creative process, and he believes this to be the case for his fellow young poets as well. He holds that poetry is charged with answering the poet's psychological state and his readings and conceptions of his surroundings.
In Mu'awiya's view, the poet always attempts "to escape the trajectory of the arrow," but poetry has developed new forms — particularly in the time of revolution and the new social movement in Sudan — and has developed new lexicons of terminology addressing themes of despair and hope. With the revolution's entry into the sphere of influence on poetic experiences, "a new mode took shape, attempting to break free from the old poetic image and to establish a new poetic mode and image with new vocabulary," in Mu'awiya's words — even amid the influence of what he terms "the dark reality, whose themes are overshadowed by violations and atrocities as a lived reality for the poets" — which drove poetic experiences toward "plunging into the old image of the literature of lamentation," and rendered the poetic image in its new modes akin to a child attempting to walk for the first time — in Mu'awiya's expression.
Poetry — for Mu'awiya — is always an attempt to establish a new spirit and a new mode for eradicating a deeply entrenched and intractable ailment. The young poet turns to the manifestation of this impulse in the poetic output that accompanied the French Revolution, and to the experience of Voltaire, who attempted to forge a new spirit for French society, in Mu'awiya's account. On the Sudanese level, Mu'awiya believes that the poetic model of Mahjoub Sharif "distilled the everyday life and details of Sudanese people," noting that "poetry is among the loftiest of human outputs" — posing questions for the reform of societies, answering them, founding the idea of difference, and entrenching the values of justice and freedom, in Mu'awiya's view. He adds: "The December Revolution contributed to the formation of a new mode of poetic experimentation for a generation that suffered under the violations of a repressive system — one that feeds on terrorising societies and continuously refines its instruments of repression." These poetic experiences attempted — in Mu'awiya's view — to liberate society from fear and prepare it for new challenges; the word, as it embraced and tested the spaces of freedom, "occupied an exalted place"; and these new variables created an opportunity for poetry to extract "a new language drawn from the revolutionary act and its instruments — by creating new worlds for the word that address matters of equality, justice, and the slogans of the glorious December Revolution."
Mu'awiya spoke of the pioneering role of cultural and literary associations in the cultural movement — nourishing and renewing the poetic schools — saying that these associations blended together in creating spaces of experimentation for poets within the university environment as a fitting literary incubator for the development of young poets' poetic experiences, through the cultural forums active in universities — which honed talents and provided a fitting stage for the poets' performances, in Mu'awiya's account.
This section was devoted to shedding light on Sudanese poetic experiences and their engagement with people's lives, and their preoccupation with social justice — as their experiences were never isolated from the concerns of the people, but were rather an elevation of the values of beauty and an extension of the written tradition of the Generation of Good Tidings heralded by Mahjoub Sharif, Muhammad Al-Hasan Salim Hamid, and Umar Al-Dawsh — and culminating, without end, in the experiences of Azhari Muhammad Ali and Babikir Al-Wasila.