Mohammed Bennis

Mohammed Bennis (محمد بنيس; born 1948) is a Moroccan poet and one of the most prominent writers of modern Arabic poetry.

Bennis attended Quranic School, joining a public primary school in 1958 at the age of ten.

He became interested in literature from an early age, particularly lyric poetry.

Bennis published his first poems in 1968 in Al Alam newspaper in Rabat.

In 1969, he sent his poems to the poet Adonis, who published them in the 9th issue of the Mawaqif poetry magazine.

Ma Qabla al-Kalam (Before Words), Bennis’ first collection of poems, was published in 1969.

Since the 1970s, he has enjoyed a particular status within Arab culture.

Muhsin J al-Musawi states that "Bennis’ articulations tend to validate his poetry in the first place, to encapsulate the overlapping and contestation of genres in a dialectic, that takes into account power politics whose tropes are special. As a discursive threshold between Arab East and the Moroccan West, tradition and modernity, and also a site of contestation and configuration, Muhammad Bennis' self-justifications may reveal another poetic predilection, too."

He pursued his university studies in literature at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Dhar Mehraz, Fez, from where he graduated as a Bachelor of Arts in Arabic literature in 1972.

He settled in Mohammedia in 1972 where he taught Arabic language.

At the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences of the Mohammed V-Agdal University, Rabat, Bennis defended his PhD thesis, supervised by Abdelkebir Khatibi, on the Phenomenon of Contemporary Poetry in Morocco in 1978.

Since 1980, he has been professor of modern Arabic poetry at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences of Rabat's Mohammed V-Agdal University.

The first time he wrote about writing was in Bayan al-Kitaba (Manifesto of Writing)(1981).

Among his essays is one titled Hadathat al-Sou’al (Modernity of interrogation) (1985).

This interrogation allowed him to open the way towards modernity and freedom, and became the mark of its poetics and cultural route.

In time, it has also embraced poetry, culture, modernity and freedom.

Bennis' attitude to French culture is ambivalent; while he rejects the ideology of francophone policy (which for him represents a form of colonization), he holds the French language in high regard.

"As a modern Arab poet, I am committed to French culture and its modernity. The French language was the home of a poetic revolution and it gave my Arabic language a poetic strength, more valuable than any of other modern languages."

Thus, he is attached to the modernization of the language and to the freedom of expression based on the fundamental values of modernity.

He has followed the tracks of "the poets who made of the human life, in its secrets as in its fears and its illuminations, their space of writing."

His poetry, which grounds itself on the measure and the trance, is the creative union of two cultures: the ancestral Arabic culture between the Middle East, Andalusia, Morocco, and the international culture.

Through the concept of writing, Bennis has become involved in a plural textual practice where language, subject and society are put in a movement.

In 1988, at the same faculty, he defended a second doctoral thesis, supervised by Jamel-Eddine Bencheikh, on Modern Arabic poetry, structures, and mutations.

Kitab al-Hobb (The Book of Love), which was published in 1994 with the Iraqi painter Dia Azzawi, is the story of a common adventure.

Open to hospitality and dialogue, Bennis has translated works from French.

They include The Wound of the Proper Name (Abdelkebir Khatibi), The Rumor of the Air and other works of Bernard Noël, Tomb of Ibn Arabi, Les 99 Stations de Yale and The Malady of Islam (Abdelwahab Meddeb), A Throw of the Dice.

From 1995, his poetry collections and books have been translated and published into French, Spanish, Italian, Turkish, German and Macedonian.

He also writes on painting.

Some of his works have been realized by painters as books and folio volumes in Morocco, Europe, the United States, and Japan.

(a poem of Stéphane Mallarmé, published in a bilingual edition, alongside Isabella Checcaglini and Bernard Noël, at Ypsilon Éditeur in Paris in 2007), and Archangélique by Georges Bataille in 2010.

He served on the judging panel for the 2008 International Prize for Arabic Fiction.

And since 2013, he is member of the Scientific Committee of Sheikh Zayed Book Award.

Bennis has been concerned with the interrogation of Moroccan poetry and Arab culture in contemporary Morocco.

He has retired since 1 September 2016, after 44 years of teaching.

He has since devoted himself to writing.

He is the Author of some forty books of poetry, prose, essays and translations —among them 16 poetry collections — and studies on Moroccan and modern Arabic poetry.

Bennis has been published in numerous newspapers and reviews across the Arab world.

Some of his poems and texts have been translated and published in collective works, reviews and newspapers, in Europe, the United States, and Japan.

and As love As life, (selected poems) of Michel Deguy in 2018.

Whilst at university, he translated French language texts into Arabic, and participated in Arabic and International poetry festivals.