ABU DHABI - Abu Dhabi's famous classical Arabic poetry contest 'Prince of Poets' witnessed the withdrawal of Palestinian poet Khaled Hajjar who failed to please a critical jury during the second stage of the programme's third session.
Seven contesters had presented their poetry in the programme aired via satellite TV.
Hajjar's verse was deemed 'archaic' by one member of the displeased jury.
His reference to historical figures in the poem won him some appraise but not enough to influence the overall negative view.
Meanwhile, his Egyptian rival, Hassan Shihab Eddine seems to have found in the jury a more sympathetic audience that awarded him passage to the next stage.
His poetry recital is in urgent need of improvement if he were to hope passing the coming stages, as the quality of the text is not enough to an audience basing its judgement largely on the spoken word.
The jury was impressed with his 'Wing of Water' poem, with Dr. Salah Fadhel saying that the poet is bold and able in his poetry, while Dr. Abdulmalek Murthadh said that the poem embodied the best poetic imagery he encountered during the whole episode.
Dr. Ali bin Tamim, who also looked favourably to the poem, was less impressed with the poet's over use of conjunction words.
Kuwaiti poet Rajaa Qahtani seems to have tried too hard in the poem he presented, which did not win the jury's whole-hearted satisfaction.
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Jury members |
An excess of metaphors, they argued, has caused the poem to lose track of its meaning, which leaves one asking 'What does the poet want to say underneath this heap of metaphors? It leaves no space to enjoy the poem.'
One jury member, Nayif Rashdan, saw that some of the poem's verses carried a "new vision."
The Iraqi poet Omar Annaz appears to have introduced words that have no significant place in his poem in an attempt to satisfy the rhyme of his verses, which did not go down very well with the critics.
To his credit, however, his recital of the poem surpassed that of many of his competitors, reducing the impact of the poor quality of the poem as a whole.
Mauritanian poetess Leila Cheghali presented a poem entitled "The Return of the Self," which was hastily read out leaving some members of the audience with incoherent gaps. The metaphors she used did not add much to her poem.
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The stage |
One jury member criticised of the female poet's "masculine" qualities of the poem which he saw caused a discord.
Another jury member criticised the poem's title (The Return of the Self) which he thought lacked originality.
The poet Najib Jahish was criticised for inconsistencies in his poem.
The Saudi poet Ahmed Hassan Qarni read out a poem entitled "When a Statue Dances." Its style, jury member Ahmad Kheris noted, mimicked the daily spoken dialect.
During the episode, renowned Syrian singer Sabah Fakhri sang one of his loved songs while Egyptian poet Iman Bakri took part with one of her poems as a guest of honour.
At the end of the programme, the jury chose to take Shihab Eddine to the contest's next stage; the Internet audience nominated Cheghali; Jahish won the votes of the audience present in the theatre; Hajjar had to withdraw; Sarraf and Ould Mtali Mrabet Ahmed (a Mauritanian from the previous episode) passed to the next stage due to audience vote and approval of the jury.
The name of the contest, ‘Prince of Poets’, was originally the honorary title granted to the Egyptian poet Ahmed Shawqi by a number of Arab poets in 1927, in appreciation of his poetry.
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