'For me, the act of writing is to commit to a kind of hope, to the will to change': Adonis Speaks to The Indian Express

Last weekend, the Syrian-born poet, Adonis traveled from Paris to Varkala, a coastal town in Kerala, to receive the Kumaran Asan World Poetry Prize. Previous recipients of the award include Léopold Sédar Senghor, from Senegal, Nicolas Guillan, from Cuba, and Judith Wright, from Australia. With his daughter, Arwad Esber, acting as translator, Adonis spoke to The Indian Express on the occasion of receiving the Kumaran Asan World Poetry Prize.

In one of your poems (Celebrating Childhood), you say ‘Your childhood is a village/ you will never cross its boundaries/ no matter how far you go’. You have been living in exile for many years now. Tell us about the Syria you remember, your childhood and how you became a poet?

I said childhood has no boundaries. It is inside you. Wherever a human being goes, he takes his childhood with him. This is why nobody can cross the boundaries of childhood. It is with me wherever I go. As I grow old, the meaning of time has become about childhood. You begin to ask the question where do you find your self? In your childhood or old age? I am trying to rediscover childhood in my old age. Syria for me remains the place where I opened my eyes for the first time, where I first stood up, where I first faced the world for the first time. Syria, like all other countries, is history, civilisation, art, poetry – all of this together.

For me, the act of writing is to commit to a kind of hope, to the will to change. People like me, who grew up in poor peasant families, the first thing you do is to dream, to hope, to change things. This is what made me write. It is the poem that gave birth to me. In the act of writing, in hoping, in willing to change things, I was reborn.

A lot of classical Arab poetry and translations from all over the world influenced me. I love the poetry of the Orient. Because even if the Orient is old and is getting older, you always felt that humans can do something, be something. [...]

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