| Mu'in Bseiso | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1926 Gaza, Mandatory Palestine |
| Died | January 23, 1984 London, U.K. |
| Occupation | Poet |
Mu'in Tawfiq Bseiso (1926 – January 23, 1984) (Arabic: معين بسيسو) was a Palestinian poet and playwright based in Egypt.
Biography
He finished his primary and secondary education in Gaza in 1948. He started publishing his work in the Jaffa-based magazine Al-Hurriya (Arabic: الحرية) (translated: Liberty), where he published his first poems in 1946. Two years later, in 1948, he enrolled in the American University in Cairo and subsequently graduated in 1952. His dissertation was titled "The Spoken or Head Word in Lower Eastern Broadcast Media", analyzed the borders between radio and TV as well as printed newspaper media.
On January 27, 1952, he published his first work titled Al-Ma'raka (Arabic: المعركة) (translated: The Battle). He published several other volumes of poetry: Palestine in the Heart, (1964), Trees Die Standing (1966). He was "closely associated with the Palestine Liberation Organization," including serving as cultural counselor to Yasser Arafat in 1987.
Bseiso was imprisoned in Egyptian jails in Gaza twice: 1955 to 1957 and 1959 to 1963. In one of them he met his future wife, Sahbaa al-Barbari, one of the first women Communists in Gaza.
He died due to heart failure in London in 1984. His body was buried near Cairo in Arba‘inat Cemetery after Israel would not allow his family to bring him back to Gaza.
Significant achievements
His works have been translated into English, French, German, Russian, Azeri, Uzbek, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Persian. Mu'in Bseiso was awarded the Afro-Asian Lotus Prize for Literature and was the vice Editor in Chief of the Lotus magazine issued by the Afro-Asian Writers' Association. Additionally, he was the 1979 recipient of the Palestine Liberation Organization Dir' Al-Thawra (Arabic: درع الثورة) (translated: Revolution Shield).
References
- Khalidi, Walid. Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians, 1876-1948. Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1991, 287.
- ^ "Muin Bseiso - Poets (1926 - 1984)". Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question – palquest. Retrieved 18 December 2024.
- Shabaneh, Omar (13 March 2013). "Three Unconventional Documentaries from Gaza". Al-Akhbar. Archived from the original on 7 August 2016.
- The International Encyclopedia of Arab Poetry. "Mu'in Bseiso" (in Arabic).
  | This article about a Palestinian poet is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it. |