Sayed Gouda in conversation with Koketso Marishane
1. You've been described as someone who ‘does not negotiate, who presents
his own world; a paradise lost with the none-transferable revealing naked
truth uncompromised’. Literally and figuratively, what is different about
you? What other qualities distinguishes you among the rest of the writers
globally?
This is the most difficult question to ask a poet especially since you put it in a global rather than a national context. But I’ll try to give an answer by saying that I’m not obsessed with becoming different from other poets. i’m not striving for that. A different poet doesn't necessarily mean a good poet. My own world is not limited to the everyday life we all live; my own world is an odyssey of the soul in search for itself. My poetry is an attempt to identify the features of my soul and recognize it by living with it consciously and by following all the changes it goes through in life. Socrates says ‘Know thyself!’ During this quest to understand my ‘self’, i encounter many struggles: a struggle to understand my relationship with the Beloved–– a love relationship that goes through many ups and downs. The constant scrutiny of this relationship produces conflicting feelings of tranquility and turmoil, peace and rage, acceptance and rejection, ecstasy and suffering, and so on. This relationship between a mortal and the Beloved is not separate from the relationships one encounters with people every day in this bustling life. Observing one’s relationships with others is also another essential part of understanding one’s ‘self’. i think this is the world i try to express in my poetry. It is definitely different from the world of other poets and this is how i can be different.
For example, I have lived in different cultures for many years and have not returned home often. i agree with Dr. Birgit Linder, who translated my poetry into German, in describing my poetry that it comes from an inside home, an inner lyrical exile perhaps, yet it is deeply rooted in the traditions of Arabic poetry. Rather than being descriptive, narrative, or overly experimental, most of my poems are lyrical and meditative, taking their starting points inside of me rather than outside. Another level of being different is the way one expresses his/her world. For instance, Whitman explores his ‘being’ through his contact with the physical world; Eliot expresses his world against a synthesis of personal and historical backdrop; Roethke illustrates his journey of self-exploration through his mystic/landscape poetry; Yeats delves into his native culture and revives his native ‘being’ in a symbolic/mystic poetry, and so on. For me, not only is my inner being the starting point of my poetry, ideally it also extends deeper inside and reaches to its most inner essence. I express this interior journey in a simple language that is enriched with Sufi symbols and mystic mood. During my inner journey, I try to annihilate the ‘self’ and see it in its absolute weakness and vanity. No more is it ‘I’ but simply ‘I’. I’m learning how to see my ‘self’ as nothing.
As for the relation between form and content in my poetry, even though i started writing in traditional forms, my form now is free in its external structure, yet musical in its inner linguistic combination and sonic formation. This musicality takes the Arabic metrical foot as its main rhythmic unit. I believe that any poet must master form in order to be able to merge it with content into one single entity without losing the form’s original musicality. With my mystic and symbolic approach, and with this way of expression that combines both traditional and modern aesthetics, I think I might be different from others.
2. Could you please briefly enlighten us on the following based on
yourself and your work: (a) Artistic philosophy; (b) General analysis on
literary artistic works from the old century compared with the most recent
thus your first choice preference for indulgence; (c) your vision for the
next generation of writers and (d) your experiences as an editor.
I think my first answer covers part of the answer to this question since my artistic philosophy is what can make me different from others. To further illustrate this point, I should say that i’m against trying to become different just for the sake of becoming different. If one is obsessed by this idea, this obsession might trap the poet into producing a work that is void of poetical aesthetics and literary merits. I’m against this obsession. One should not opt to spray a foul smell on one’s body only because one is tired of perfume. Therefore, the thing is: if one has something to offer to the world, this thing must be beautiful and must be expressed beautifully, otherwise, the world is in no need for it.
Inventing a new language or a new way of expression is something that can happen maybe once every few decades. However, modernization cannot be restricted only to the linguistic level as one can also be inventive and modernist by introducing a new approach to life, or calling for a new world, or even reviving something or some values forgotten in our time. It is a matter of introducing something that is not currently practiced whether it is totally new or old but recently revived. While the element of foreignization is important, the element of familiarization is equally important. Yes, we are individually different but we are collectively similar, too. To summarize my artistic philosophy, i should say: ‘Be yourself! Observe your soul in relationships and express it in simple yet evocative language. Eventually, the world will see you different!’
As for my analysis of literary works from the old century compared with the most recent, this is a huge question that needs volumes to answer. There are many movements appeared in the world of English poetry only like New Criticism, Black Mountain, Beats, Confessional poetry, New York school, Black Arts, Language poetry, New Formalism in the US, The Movement in the UK, The Rhymers’ Club and The New Rhymers’ Club in Ireland and so on and so forth. To give you a short answer, I see a universal phenomenon in returning to old rhythm and lyricism. The musicality of old forms is returning in modern poetry in conventional and unconventional forms. My personal preference goes to the poetry that uses music to foster the meaning and not the poetry that uses music for its own sake nor the poetry that has no music at all. In terms of meaning, I prefer the poetry that has its own philosophy toward life and can evocate feelings and generate ideas into the reader and not the poetry that deals shallowly with everyday life in a prosy language that suits only journalistic writing.
As for the writing of the next generation, i think writers didn’t leave a form or a style without trying their hands at it. They will go on writing in all these different forms and styles. What poetry needs more is a good critic to inform the public of what good poetry is, to dexterously chopstick it from among a great heap of poetry of bad taste.
Editing a website of literature, mainly poetry, puts me in a constant touch with numerous texts of varied quality. The good news is that many people still read and write poetry. As an editor of a website that has become one of the most important and most visited literary websites in the Arabic world, I have to be critical and selective and publish only works of quality.
3. If you had to pay special tribute to five writers globally, who would
they be and why?
I’ll choose five poets since we talk mainly about poetry. My most favourite five poets of all times in their alphabetical order are: Abu Al-’Alaa Al-Ma’arry, Li Bai, Rilke, Rumi, and Tagore. Why these five poets? Because their poetry enters my heart without permission! Each of them has this fresh spontaneity that is full of depth and eloquence and beauty and life. Al-Ma’arry’s poetry is a philosophic type of poetry; it takes you deep into the secrets of life and death as best as they can ever be expressed in poetry. Li Bai’s poetry is a celebration of life and joy without being tainted with all the disappointment and melancholy one suffers in life. Rilke, Rumi, and Tagore’s poetry is the food for my soul. Of course, i love the works of so many other poets like Al-Mutanabby, Ibn ar-Rumi, Ibn Araby, Ibn al-Faridh, Ibn al-Mu’taz, Mahmud Darwish, Salah Abdul Sabur, Amal Donqul, Badr Shakir As-Sayyab in Arabic poetry; Shakespeare, Shelley, Wordsworth, Whitman, Dickenson, Frost, Poe, Eliot, Yeats in English; Du Fu, Li Shangyin, Wang Wei, He Qifang, Gu Cheng, Bei Dao, Duo Duo in Chinese, and so many other poets in different languages. They are just too many to be listed here.
4. Based on the notion that all are passers-bye, what would your eulogy be?
I always ask myself this question. i think only my readers can answer it. But if it is about my wish, then I wish people would read me and say: ‘He was a good poet who wrote about life and death in depth and sincerity. He was not pretentious in anything he wrote’.
5. Had you not been into the literary industry, what other field would you
have opted for – why, and what message would you give to the readers?
If I had not been in the literary industry i would have wished to be either a painter or a musician. I do practice painting and sketching as a hobby and I wish I had a chance to learn a musical instrument. But if I had to choose something totally different from all forms of art, then I would have liked to be a physician to cure people from their diseases and lessen their sufferings. It is a profession that would still make me ponder over life and death. I believe that contemplating death is the essence of wisdom.
1. You've been described as someone who ‘does not negotiate, who presents
his own world; a paradise lost with the none-transferable revealing naked
truth uncompromised’. Literally and figuratively, what is different about
you? What other qualities distinguishes you among the rest of the writers
globally?
This is the most difficult question to ask a poet especially since you put it in a global rather than a national context. But I’ll try to give an answer by saying that I’m not obsessed with becoming different from other poets. i’m not striving for that. A different poet doesn't necessarily mean a good poet. My own world is not limited to the everyday life we all live; my own world is an odyssey of the soul in search for itself. My poetry is an attempt to identify the features of my soul and recognize it by living with it consciously and by following all the changes it goes through in life. Socrates says ‘Know thyself!’ During this quest to understand my ‘self’, i encounter many struggles: a struggle to understand my relationship with the Beloved–– a love relationship that goes through many ups and downs. The constant scrutiny of this relationship produces conflicting feelings of tranquility and turmoil, peace and rage, acceptance and rejection, ecstasy and suffering, and so on. This relationship between a mortal and the Beloved is not separate from the relationships one encounters with people every day in this bustling life. Observing one’s relationships with others is also another essential part of understanding one’s ‘self’. i think this is the world i try to express in my poetry. It is definitely different from the world of other poets and this is how i can be different.
For example, I have lived in different cultures for many years and have not returned home often. i agree with Dr. Birgit Linder, who translated my poetry into German, in describing my poetry that it comes from an inside home, an inner lyrical exile perhaps, yet it is deeply rooted in the traditions of Arabic poetry. Rather than being descriptive, narrative, or overly experimental, most of my poems are lyrical and meditative, taking their starting points inside of me rather than outside. Another level of being different is the way one expresses his/her world. For instance, Whitman explores his ‘being’ through his contact with the physical world; Eliot expresses his world against a synthesis of personal and historical backdrop; Roethke illustrates his journey of self-exploration through his mystic/landscape poetry; Yeats delves into his native culture and revives his native ‘being’ in a symbolic/mystic poetry, and so on. For me, not only is my inner being the starting point of my poetry, ideally it also extends deeper inside and reaches to its most inner essence. I express this interior journey in a simple language that is enriched with Sufi symbols and mystic mood. During my inner journey, I try to annihilate the ‘self’ and see it in its absolute weakness and vanity. No more is it ‘I’ but simply ‘I’. I’m learning how to see my ‘self’ as nothing.
As for the relation between form and content in my poetry, even though i started writing in traditional forms, my form now is free in its external structure, yet musical in its inner linguistic combination and sonic formation. This musicality takes the Arabic metrical foot as its main rhythmic unit. I believe that any poet must master form in order to be able to merge it with content into one single entity without losing the form’s original musicality. With my mystic and symbolic approach, and with this way of expression that combines both traditional and modern aesthetics, I think I might be different from others.
2. Could you please briefly enlighten us on the following based on
yourself and your work: (a) Artistic philosophy; (b) General analysis on
literary artistic works from the old century compared with the most recent
thus your first choice preference for indulgence; (c) your vision for the
next generation of writers and (d) your experiences as an editor.
I think my first answer covers part of the answer to this question since my artistic philosophy is what can make me different from others. To further illustrate this point, I should say that i’m against trying to become different just for the sake of becoming different. If one is obsessed by this idea, this obsession might trap the poet into producing a work that is void of poetical aesthetics and literary merits. I’m against this obsession. One should not opt to spray a foul smell on one’s body only because one is tired of perfume. Therefore, the thing is: if one has something to offer to the world, this thing must be beautiful and must be expressed beautifully, otherwise, the world is in no need for it.
Inventing a new language or a new way of expression is something that can happen maybe once every few decades. However, modernization cannot be restricted only to the linguistic level as one can also be inventive and modernist by introducing a new approach to life, or calling for a new world, or even reviving something or some values forgotten in our time. It is a matter of introducing something that is not currently practiced whether it is totally new or old but recently revived. While the element of foreignization is important, the element of familiarization is equally important. Yes, we are individually different but we are collectively similar, too. To summarize my artistic philosophy, i should say: ‘Be yourself! Observe your soul in relationships and express it in simple yet evocative language. Eventually, the world will see you different!’
As for my analysis of literary works from the old century compared with the most recent, this is a huge question that needs volumes to answer. There are many movements appeared in the world of English poetry only like New Criticism, Black Mountain, Beats, Confessional poetry, New York school, Black Arts, Language poetry, New Formalism in the US, The Movement in the UK, The Rhymers’ Club and The New Rhymers’ Club in Ireland and so on and so forth. To give you a short answer, I see a universal phenomenon in returning to old rhythm and lyricism. The musicality of old forms is returning in modern poetry in conventional and unconventional forms. My personal preference goes to the poetry that uses music to foster the meaning and not the poetry that uses music for its own sake nor the poetry that has no music at all. In terms of meaning, I prefer the poetry that has its own philosophy toward life and can evocate feelings and generate ideas into the reader and not the poetry that deals shallowly with everyday life in a prosy language that suits only journalistic writing.
As for the writing of the next generation, i think writers didn’t leave a form or a style without trying their hands at it. They will go on writing in all these different forms and styles. What poetry needs more is a good critic to inform the public of what good poetry is, to dexterously chopstick it from among a great heap of poetry of bad taste.
Editing a website of literature, mainly poetry, puts me in a constant touch with numerous texts of varied quality. The good news is that many people still read and write poetry. As an editor of a website that has become one of the most important and most visited literary websites in the Arabic world, I have to be critical and selective and publish only works of quality.
3. If you had to pay special tribute to five writers globally, who would
they be and why?
I’ll choose five poets since we talk mainly about poetry. My most favourite five poets of all times in their alphabetical order are: Abu Al-’Alaa Al-Ma’arry, Li Bai, Rilke, Rumi, and Tagore. Why these five poets? Because their poetry enters my heart without permission! Each of them has this fresh spontaneity that is full of depth and eloquence and beauty and life. Al-Ma’arry’s poetry is a philosophic type of poetry; it takes you deep into the secrets of life and death as best as they can ever be expressed in poetry. Li Bai’s poetry is a celebration of life and joy without being tainted with all the disappointment and melancholy one suffers in life. Rilke, Rumi, and Tagore’s poetry is the food for my soul. Of course, i love the works of so many other poets like Al-Mutanabby, Ibn ar-Rumi, Ibn Araby, Ibn al-Faridh, Ibn al-Mu’taz, Mahmud Darwish, Salah Abdul Sabur, Amal Donqul, Badr Shakir As-Sayyab in Arabic poetry; Shakespeare, Shelley, Wordsworth, Whitman, Dickenson, Frost, Poe, Eliot, Yeats in English; Du Fu, Li Shangyin, Wang Wei, He Qifang, Gu Cheng, Bei Dao, Duo Duo in Chinese, and so many other poets in different languages. They are just too many to be listed here.
4. Based on the notion that all are passers-bye, what would your eulogy be?
I always ask myself this question. i think only my readers can answer it. But if it is about my wish, then I wish people would read me and say: ‘He was a good poet who wrote about life and death in depth and sincerity. He was not pretentious in anything he wrote’.
5. Had you not been into the literary industry, what other field would you
have opted for – why, and what message would you give to the readers?
If I had not been in the literary industry i would have wished to be either a painter or a musician. I do practice painting and sketching as a hobby and I wish I had a chance to learn a musical instrument. But if I had to choose something totally different from all forms of art, then I would have liked to be a physician to cure people from their diseases and lessen their sufferings. It is a profession that would still make me ponder over life and death. I believe that contemplating death is the essence of wisdom.
