Amjad Nasser

Amjad Nasser (Arabic: أمجد ناصر ‎), known with the pseudonym of Yahya Numeiri al-Naimat (Arabic: يحيى النميري النعيمات ‎), (1955 – 31 October 2019) was a London-based Jordanian writer, journalist and poet and one of the pioneers of modern Arabic poetry and Arabic prose poem.

In 2014, the United States prohibited him from traveling to the country.

He published eight books of poetry and two books of travelogue. Because of these stories, Amjad Nasser is considered one of the first contemporary Arab intellectuals to take an interest in the genre. In 2006, he won the Mohammed Al-Maghout prize for poetry.

In his last poetic work Hayatun sardin mutaqatta'in ka (life as an intermittent narrative) published in 2004, Amjad Nasser took a new path in prose poetry in Arabic. It pushed the boundaries of narrative poetry unprecedented, but without watering down the poem of his poetic charge buried deep in the text. This work was met with many reactions that ranged from the good reception given to this bold opening to the story with the prosaic manner that it requires, and the refusal by those who consider that the prosaic narrative is greater than that borne by the poem. But Amjad Nasser's approach in this work remains as a new aesthetic inspiration that would commit the controversy in an Arab poetic context almost devoid of any debate on the issues of form and content. This has been prepared by the Lebanese poet and critic Abbas Beydoun, in his dialogue with Amjad Nasser after the publication of the collection in question.

Several television documentaries have been produced on Amjad Nasser and his work. The film, produced by Jordanian television called Sinbad the landowner, on the occasion of the appointment of Amman as Arab Capital of Culture for 2002, or that produced by the chain "al Arabiya" as part of the show Rawafid (Tributaries), were broadcast on two episodes.

Amjad Nasser had published since he began writing, eight books of poetry and a novel. His complete works of poetry were published in one volume in 2002 at the Al-al-arabiya mou'assassa editor (The Arab Institution for Studies and Publishing).

In another collection Murtaqa al anfas (the heyday of breath), published in 1997, he developed a way to both panoramic, lyrical and epic tragedy of Abu Abdullah As-Saghir, the last Arabic king in Andalusia .

In his collection Surra man Raak (Happy is he who sees you), published in 1994, he re-created a new Arabic poetry of love, described by a number of Arab critics, modern and unique.

In Lebanon, he joined one of the Palestinian militant underground organizations, while at the same time studying at Beirut Arab University. But he soon left his studies and devoted himself full-time to journalistic and cultural work in the Palestinian media. He worked as an editor for the cultural section of al-Hadaf magazine, which was founded by Ghassan Kanafani, he worked there until the Siege of Beirut in the summer of 1982, when he started to work with Palestinian radio.

After the siege of Beirut in 1982, Amjad Nasser left for Cyprus, where he continued to work in the Palestinian media. In 1987, he went to London to work in the Arab media in Britain, including the daily newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi, where he edited the newspaper's culture section .

Amjad Nasser was one of the pioneers among the young poets who after a remarkable experience with poetry, converted to prose poem. Starting with his second work entitled Mundhu jil'ad, published in 1981, he continued to write this kind of poetry with his distinctive use of the Arabic language, which critic Subhi Hadidi, said was missing in his third work called Raa'at al-'uzla (1986).

In 1979, he published his first collection of poetry Madih li-Maqha Akhar, in which Iraqi poet Saadi Yousef wrote the preface. This collection was well received by critics, especially in the Lebanese and Arab press.

He worked in the Jordanian television and print media in Amman for around two years. He then left for Lebanon in 1977, following a political crisis linked to the Palestinian organization he was a part of.