Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
He was born on April 11, 1946 in the village of Bani Naim, in the district of Hebron, and left it after its occupation by the Israeli army in June 1967, heading towards Jordan, which is geographically closer. He died on April 5, 2021 in Amman, the Jordanian capital. He was a poet, critic, thinker, and academic. Palestinian. He won several awards as a writer and academic.
Izz al-Din al-Manasra has been one of the Palestinian resistance poets since the late sixties, when his name was associated with the armed and cultural resistance and with poets such as Mahmoud Darwish, Samih al-Qasim, and Tawfiq Ziyad, or as they are collectively called “the Big Four in Palestinian poetry.” His poems were sung by Marcel Khalifa and others, and his poems, “Jafra” and “With Green, We Knock Him,” became famous.
Al-Manasra contributed to the development of modern Arabic poetry and the development of cultural criticism methodologies. Ihsan Abbas described him as one of the pioneers of the modern poetic movement. He obtained a BA in Arabic Language and Islamic Sciences from Cairo University in 1968, where he began his poetic career. He then moved to Jordan and worked as director of cultural programs on Jordanian Radio from 1970 to 1973. In the same period, he founded the Jordanian Writers Association with a group of thinkers. And Jordanian writers.
He was elected as a member of the military command of the joint Palestinian-Lebanese forces in the southern Beirut area during the beginnings of the Lebanese Civil War in 1976. He was assigned by Yasser Arafat to run the school for the sons and daughters of the Tal al-Zaatar camp after the remaining camp residents were displaced to the Lebanese village of Damour.
He later completed his graduate studies, obtaining a (specialization certificate) in modern Bulgarian literature, and a doctorate degree in modern criticism and comparative literature at Sofia University in 1981. After his return to Beirut in 1982, he participated in the ranks of the resistance again during the siege of Beirut, and supervised the publication of Al-Markah newspaper. Until he left Beirut among the ranks of the guerrillas as part of the deal to end the siege.
Al-Manasra moved between several countries before landing in Algeria in 1983, where he worked as a professor of literature at the University of Constantine and then the University of Tlemcen. In the early 1990s, he moved to Jordan, where he founded the Arabic Language Department at Al-Quds Open University (before its headquarters moved to Palestine), after which he became director of the College of Educational Sciences affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and Philadelphia University, where he obtained the rank of professor in 2005. He won several awards in literature, including: the Jordanian State Appreciation Award in the field of poetry in 1995, and the Al-Quds Award in 2011.
Al-Manasra began his studies at Bani Naim Primary School and then joined Al-Hussein Bin Ali Secondary School in the city of Hebron. From a young age, he began composing poetry and publishing articles in the popular literary magazines of that period at the beginning of the year 1962. Al-Manasra’s poetry was influenced by the specificity of the place in which he grew up, as he developed a close connection with myths, popular culture, and the lifestyle associated with the history of the region extending from the emergence of the Canaanites in the Chalcolithic Age to the modern era.
This influence appeared through Al-Manasra’s vocabulary, expressions, and use of various cultural concepts associated with the ancient and modern history of Palestine. Al-Manasra left a valuable legacy of poetry collections; And from him is the collection “O Grapes of Hebron”, Cairo - Beirut, 1968, Exit from the Dead Sea, Beirut, 1969, Dead Sea Memoirs, Beirut, 1969, The Jerash Moon Was Sad, Beirut, 1974, With green we shrouded it, Beirut, 1976, Jafra, Beirut, 1981, Canaanite, Beirut, 1981, Hiziya in Love with the Oasis Spray - Amman, 1990, Canaanite Pastorals, Cyprus, 1992, I Don’t Trust the Cuckoo Bird, Ramallah, 2000, A Roof in the Sky, Amman, 2009, Canaan Glows (Poetry Selections) ), Dar Ward, Amman, 2008;
He also published critical intellectual books, including Palestinian Fine Art - Palestine Revolution Publications - Beirut - 1975, Israeli Cinema in the Twentieth Century, Beirut, 1975, Problems of the Prose Poem, Beirut - Ramallah 1998, and the Encyclopedia of Palestinian Fine Art in the Twentieth Century (in two volumes). , Amman, 2003, Criticism of Poetry in the Twentieth Century, Al-Sayel Publishing and Distribution, Amman, 2012, The Palestinian Palm Straddles the American Awl - Al-Sayel Publishing and Distribution, Amman 2013, The Jamrah of the Poetic Text 2007. Most importantly, Al-Manasra was directly involved in the ranks of the Palestinian revolution.
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