Maysoon Saqr..a special creative experience

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“Writing is the writer’s life that flows in his veins. The thoughts that the creator has to translate into words, and words cannot remain trapped in the writer’s conscience or thought, without having their place on paper.” These words of Emirati writer Maysoon Saqr Al Qasimi are in line Exactly with her creative direction. She excelled in more than one literary genre, so she wrote poetry and novel, as well as her uniqueness in the plastic arts, and perhaps it applies to her experience specifically in the field of writing, the saying of the Roman writer Emil Cioran: “The important thing is language, words and writing, not vaults and patterns.” The glorified writer is the one who creates in various forms of creative writing poetry or narration, and this is what Maysoon does in her creative experience.

beginnings

Reading and reading books and mothers of books was the main starting point for Mason towards the worlds of literature, and perhaps her upbringing in a house concerned with culture and knowledge shaped her creative conscience and led her to the path of writing. , which enabled her to acquire knowledge from its sources, as the library of the father was a rich source that led Mason to the field of literature, before she formed her own library. The family’s diary in her father’s house was full of cultural and artistic activities, and this family environment contributed to the formation of her independent personality, and gave her an opportunity that was not given to many decades ago, and this is what she continued to confirm, as she previously said: “The family atmosphere in which I lived made me feel the change of what is happening. Inside me, I began to search for something that I lacked that I did not know through the book and continuous reading, which is the closest to reading discovery, attending poetic evenings, following up on seminars, and listening to all new poetic voices. In it, by formulating expressive topics in my school, which helped to refine my talent and made me aware of the importance of that, and bearing its responsibility, and preserving and developing it in the light of a special curriculum.” Perhaps all the attention that the writer found at home had a great advantage in shaping the conscience of a pioneering writer, who was able to reserve a distinguished place among the writers of the Emirates and the Arab world.

Poetry

Poetry occupies a beloved place in Maysoon’s heart, so she excelled in it early on, and chose a style and method of her own, with her personality that loves freedom and moves away from tradition. She chose not to lock her words in patterns and vaults, but Lamison has a complete view of her choice of modern poetry systems, she says: “I do not know how I chose the prose poem. I found myself in prose poetry more lively, perhaps because this poem is more in tune with my soul and more in tune with my own literary style.

Business

Mason has many distinguished poetic works, such as “This is how I call things,” “The Rakhan,” “Flowing in the Substance of the Body,” “The House,” “The Other in Its Darkness,” “The Formation of Hurt,” and “A Madman Who Doesn’t Love Me.” ”, “The Widow of a Bandit”, and “My Beauty in the Pictures”, and also issued two Diwans in the Egyptian dialect, namely: “He treats himself as walking” and “Makhbieh Al-Dalaa in her clothes.”

The writer has a great love for Egypt, which also contributed to the formation of her creative conscience, and her poetic experience enriched her with great resonance and acceptance. She translated many of her poems into international languages: English, French, Spanish and German, and participated in many Arab and international art and poetry festivals, and this confirms Mason’s great position in The map of Arabic literature. Poetry, as you can see, bears witness to the being of its existence, as it testifies to its becoming in life, its mortality and non-existence.

Narration

Narration also has its own special place with Maysoon, especially the novel, as she sees novels as an archive of real life mixed with dream and passion as another addition to the ability to live, and its most important impact is that it is a creative document between reality and imagination.

She says regarding the specificity of the Arabic narration and novel: “We write our biography and history and mix it in our literature, not in an Orientalist way, as happens from the other side regarding us, but rather that we look at it in its depth.”

This understanding and vision that Maysoon carries is evident in her narrative works since her first novel entitled “Rehana” in Cairo 2003. It deals with the issue of women and the idea of ​​freedom and some of the reality of the Gulf, the Emirates and the Emirate of Sharjah. Pearl” regarding the Egyptian-Lebanese House 2016, and it deals with the world of fishing and the life of divers, and through it presents a vision of the life of the Emirates during the time of pearl fishing. The self and the transformations of the region.

Honoring

And this year, the writer Maysoon Al Qasimi was honored with the Sheikh Zayed Prize for Literature for the year 2022, the Arts branch, for her book “Feather Café.. Eye on Egypt”, issued by Nahdet Misr Publishing House in 2021, as the first Emirati writer to receive it. The book deals with the definition of Khedive Cairo, and details the architectural, cultural, political and social history of the downtown area, focusing on the history of Café Riche, which is one of the most important cafés in Cairo. The book refers to the great love that the author has for Cairo, where she spent the best years of her life.

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Maysoon Al Qassimi graduated from the Faculty of Economics and Political Science from the Politics Department at Cairo University, and worked at the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi at the Documentation Center, then at the Culture and Arts Foundation as head of the Culture Department, then at the Arts Department, and worked at the Ministry of Information and Culture as Director of Cultural Administration, and in addition to her prominence in the In the fields of poetry, literature and plastic arts, I also tried writing scripts for children’s books.