11th Arab Poetry Spring festival kicks off

KUWAIT, March 25 (KUNA) -- Under the patronage of His Highness the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah, the 11th Arab Poetry Spring festival kicked off Sunday.
This remarkable presence of poets from across the Arab world is a clear recognition of the efforts of the organizer the Abdulaziz Saud Al-Babtain Cultural Foundation and the State of Kuwait and its leader His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah in serving the Arab culture, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs Anas Al-Saleh said in the opening speech.
He expressed admiration of the efforts of the Al-Babtain Foundation in promoting Arabic culture, describing the Kuwaiti foundation as a great representative of the Arab culture.
For his part, Chairman of the Al-Babtain Foundation Abdulaziz Babtain announced the annual festival celebrates the outstanding works of Arab poets.
He named Kuwaiti poet Souad Al-Sabah and Saudi poet Dr. Thoraya Al-Arayedh as the guests of honor of this edition.
Since its inception, Al-Babtain's foundation is focusing on caring for and assimilating Arabic poetry, Al-Babtain said.
For this purpose, the Foundation had been organizing a wide array of activities including forums, festivals and poetry telling evening sessions to which with thousands of poets, academics and media figures had contributed and had published over 400 publications, he added.
Al-Babtain announced the intention of the Foundation to issue the Al-Babtain dictionary of Arab poets in the era of states and the emirates, which would encompass works and biographies of Arab poets who lived during the period from 1285 until 1800 AD.
The dictionary would be the largest poetry encyclopedia, he boasted.
He honored Kuwaiti poet Souad Al-Sabah and Saudi poet Dr. Thoraya Al-Arayedh, the guests of honor.
Later, he unveiled the winners of this year's edition of the Foundation of Abdulaziz Saud Al-Babtain's Prize for Poetic Creativity, noting that that honoring of outstanding poets is a prime goal of the Foundation.
Late Egyptian poet Farouq Shousha was given a posthumous award poetic creativity in recognition of his literary works, he said.
He pointed out the Egyptian poetry critics Dr. Fawzi Issa and Dr. Abdulrahman Abdulsalam shared the award for creativity in poetry criticism.
The best poetry collection was given Egyptian poet Ahmad Antar. Meanwhile, Syrian poet Marwa Halawa won the best poem award, he said.
In the category of young poets award, Saudi poet Abdul Latif bin Yusuf won the best poetry collection while the Moroccan poet Omar Alraji snatched the best poem award.
The ceremony also honored Kuwaiti students Fatima Al-Qarashi and Hadi Al-Mutairi who have recently grabbed the second and third places in Arabic eloquence and poetry reading contest of the Arab League's Department of Culture respectively.
In statements to KUNA following, the honoring Saudi peot Al-Arayedh thanked Kuwait and the Al-Babtain Foundation for the honoring.
She expressed gratitude to the organizers for choosing her share the honoring with fellow renowned Kuwaiti poet Souad Al-Sabah.
"Both of us are Gulf female poets who wrote about homeland, freedom, women and love," she said.
The Arab Poetry Spring Festival will continue until March 27th and will host a series of poetry reading sessions. (end) hjb.fs.ibi