Bahrain mourns poet Ali Abdullah Khalifa

TDT | Manama

Email: mail@newsofbahrain.com

Bahrain lost one of its best-known literary names on Monday with the death of poet, writer and folk culture researcher Ali Abdullah Khalifa, aged 82.

Khalifa, born in Muharraq on March 4, 1944, was among the early names in modern Bahraini poetry. His work, in both classical Arabic and the spoken tongue, spanned more than six decades and drew often on the sea, place, memory and the folk life of Bahrain.

He published his first poems in Bahrain and Lebanon in the early 1960s. His first poetry collection, Anin Al Sawari, was issued by Dar Al Ilm Lilmalayin in Beirut in 1969. A second collection, Ida’a Li Dhakirat Al Watan, followed in 1973.

The son of a pearl-diving family, Khalifa grew up in Muharraq in a home where poems, sea songs and work chants were part of daily life. He studied at a Quran school in Bahrain in 1951 and finished secondary school in 1962.

For seven years, from 1962 to 1968, he taught himself through long reading at the public library in Manama, with a focus on Arab heritage and world thought.

His work went beyond poetry. In 1974 he founded Dar Al Ghad for Publishing and Distribution in Bahrain. In 1976 he founded the quarterly literary magazine Kitabat and served as its editor-in-chief until 1985. He later edited Al Ma’thurat Al Sha’biya from 1985 to 1987.

Khalifa also helped found the Folk Heritage Centre for the Arab Gulf States in 1982 and ran it for five years.

His link with field research began early. In 1963, while still a secondary school pupil, he worked as a guide for Danish ethnomusicologist Poul Rovsing Olsen during a field trip to collect folk music in Bahrain. In 1966, he joined Swiss scholar Simon Jargy on work to collect Bahraini folk song texts.

He later took part in poetry events across the Arab world and beyond, including the Arab Poetry Festival, Al Mirbad, Jerash, the World Poetry Meeting and Autumn in France.

He also joined expert talks on authors’ rights, folk heritage and Arab culture, including work linked to WIPO and the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organisation.

Selections from his poems were taught in schools in Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE. Some of his work was translated into English, French, Italian, Polish, Romanian and Portuguese.

Khalifa received the first poetry prize from Huna Al Bahrain magazine in 1966 and the Medal of Merit from the late Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba at the Arab Poetry Festival in 1973.

He was awarded the Shaikh Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa Medal in 2000 and the First Class Medal of Merit from His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa in 2002.

The Bahrain Writers Association honoured him with the Creativity Shield on World Poetry Day in 2004 for his poetry and his role in modern Bahraini verse. He also received the Grand International Prize in Arts from the World Academy of East and West in Romania in 2006.

Khalifa’s death closes a long career in poetry, publishing, research and cultural work, leaving a body of writing closely tied to Bahrain’s memory, folk culture and modern literary life.