Shi‘r al-‘Āmmiyya and Modernism in Arabic Poetry

Abstract

The term “shi‘r al-‘āmmiyya,” was coined in 1961 by a group of young poets including Ṣalāḥ Jāhīn, Sayyid Ḥigāb, Fu’ād Qā‘ūd, and ‘Abd al-Raḥman al-Abnūdī, who had all decided to write in the Egyptian spoken rather than the standard written register of Arabic. At that time Jāhīn had published two books of poetry, Kilmit salām (1951) and Mawwāl ‘ashān al-qanāl, “A Mawwāl for the Canal,” (1957). The others’ poetry was still unpublished. The group named itself “Jamā‘it Ibn ‘Arūs,” after the Egyptian poet Ibn ‘Arūs (b. 1780) who wrote in colloquial Arabic and of whose poetry only a small part has surviveḍ² In coining the term shi‘r al-‘āmmiyya, the new colloquial poets were putting an end to the centuries-old Arabic tradition of restricting the term shi‘r to poetry written in the canonical literary language. They were working toward changing the traditional outlook on the linguistic register as a primary criterion for classifying poetic genres, which had kept colloquial poetry isolated from its classical counterpart.

[P]oetry must not stray too far from the ordinary everyday language which we use and hear. Whether poetry is accentual or syllabic, formal or free, it cannot afford to lose its contact with the changing language of common intercourse.¹