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He is considered as one of the pioneers of the modern Arabic poetical movement in the Gulf and in the Arabian Peninsula. His poetical voice is also known in the Arab world.
He is been writing poetry since the early sixties using modern standard Arabic and vernacular.
The poet possess seven printed poetical works, five of it in modern standard Arabic, two in vernacular, in addition to other works in modern standard Arabic under printing process.
In his first collection of poetry entitled (Anin A-sawary) published in Beirut 1969, in which he expressed the concerns and problems of the diving workers of pearls in Bahrain and the Gulf area. He was the first to expose the issue of maritime feudalism in the gulf’s economy same as to the agricultural one if not fiercer than the latter. He also warned that the Arab reader of the existence of the worst forms of human exploitation behind the fame of Bahrain for its natural pearls before the discovery of oil.
In the second collection of poems entitled (Atash A-nakheel) issued in Beirut in 1970, the poet exposed through his emotional experience the issue of the continuation of agricultural feudalism in the Gulf of oil and expressed the suffering of the Bahraini farmers and emphasized on the Bahraini Arab identity at a time when it was under international examination to refute the Shah of Iran greediness at that time, which made these poems national popular songs.
Idhaa li dhakirat Al-watan) issued in 1973 by Dar Arts Beirut, the concerns of the poet intermingled with facts of Bahraini national movement which led the struggle against the British colonialism before independence. The voice of the poet in this collection of poems was the voice of the national conscience which recorded the position of the martyrs and freedom fighters and presented documentary evidence on national uprising of the struggle of the Bahraini for freedom and independence. As a matter of fact, those poems were like national epics related to the Bahraini people s’ consciousness and expressed their hopes.
(Assafir Al-massa) issued in Bahrain in 1983, in which the poet presented a new way of presenting his poetry written in vernacular. In fact, he presented his collection of poems in an album of four tapes recorded with his own voice accompanied with a music especially composed for recitation that the poet commands. With the participation of five of the most prominent composers of Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait in addition to the printed text in a book. This experience has been characterized by its rich dimensions in the artistic milieu. The artists Khalid Sheikh Abdullah Rewaishid ,and Ahmed Aljoomiri sang a variety of poems from this collection which has been recited in all parts of the Arab world.
In his fifth collection of poems entitled On Saying Goodbye to the Lady in Green published by Dar El Ghad in Bahrain in 1992, the poet moved to a more wider humanist concerns related to humans’ relationship with nature which beauty began to recede in front of the expansion of asphalt , cement and concrete. The poet bedded farewell ,in a distressed mood, the time of greenery presented in thousands of palms which were made thirsty until it dried out and died to be replaced by fields of glass and cement buildings that constitute the modern civilization. Amongst this losing stream, the poet expressed his spiritual alienation, raising his voice against everything that deforms the humanity of man and calling for the maintaining the spiritual and esthetic values inside of him. Greenery, in this collection of poems, symbolizes innocence and virginity of the entire world, which is about to depart on a tragic farewell.
In his sixth collection of poems entitled the (Houriet Al-achek) issued in 2000 by the Arab Institution for Studies in Beirut. The poet was preoccupied by many humanitarian concerns that represented a perplexity for the contemporary Arab in front of the challenges of life. The poet also presented spiritual and emotional experiences in relation to humans’ ability to preserve his purity, innocence and sincerity and the maintaining of his genuine Arab posture in the face of injustice, spoliation and constraint alienation, compulsion and domination of the strongest. At the end of this collection of poems, the poet made a noticeable cry with a deep connotation that if man could not resist the physical and moral pollution, he must preserve his own purity against the pollution of the world.
In his collection (La Yatchabah A-shajar) the degree of maturity which is attained by the poet through a hard memoir of overwork and experience in the art of poetic expression, becomes manifest. The poet possesses all his artistic tools and started showering with his products, being inclined to the contemplation of nature and the attempt to get to the bottom of people around him in exhausting life experiences in which the sufferance equals the pleasure of uncovering the hidden and knowing the truths. We find in this distinguished collection of poems abundance in production and a diversity.
For over forty years, the Bahraini poet Ali Abdullah Khalifa kept his poetic flamboyance and creative diversity. Each collection of his poems dealt with a particular issue about personal and general human gloom, at the same time and the concerns of the contemporary Arab man in the different tormenting changes. An Arab poet who discussed the political, social, economic and existential concerns of the Arab man, and the issues of the oppressed, suppressed intellectual Arab man and the successive crises that befell on the Arab world and the successive defeats since the tragedy of 1967 and the defeat of 1973 and the subsequent tragedies in the life of Arabs which made the Arab man a broken creature in reality, soul and emotion.
Even if the poet seemed to be realistic, he had opened a window on history through which he was able to see the tragic living reality. He also opened a large window on the Arabic popular heritage based on his first cultural formation in his popular environment from which he originated to reinforce his relationship with people. So that the poet will seem to be revolutionary on some issues, romantic, or pensive in others. His school is life and people.
The poet did not want, out of personal awareness and conviction, to be a copy of his contemporaries fascinated by the exaggeration in experimentation. He insisted on being original in his experience, modern but with a special view of modernism. The modernism of Ali Khalifa is far from precipitance, artificiality, falsification, glorification of slogans and mounting of casual artistic waves. At the same time, he opened his mind to dialogue with the different poetic experiences with the other, and to understand the nature of invented artistic techniques, to interact with them and to take over from it according to his personal convictions, appealing to make room for the blossoms to flower in the garden of poetry. He wrote a skilfully the free verse then he naturally moved to the footed verse with all the artistic techniques and new handling of meter, image, symbol and flashback which characterize this orientation. The attentive reader of his poems detects in them a pulsating artistic course of a poetic talent with a particularity and distinctiveness which can ascribe its product only to its holder attached to the history and civilization of the Arab man in contents with the diversity of emotional experiences.
This artistic trend made him gather in his poetical production between the artistic originality and poetic modernism while he kept an intimate relationship with a large number of his local and Arabic audience and who gave him a special position in the modern poetical movement in the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula.
Since his earlier days, the poet bet on vernacular poetry and that the vernacular in the Arab world is developing in the hope that at the end it will be as close as possible to classical Arabic in the light of the Arab society evolution, the spread of education, the techniques of communication and the openness on the world. This view has been confirmed in what has been exposed in his poems written in vernacular, which language became closer to be as eloquent as the modern standard Arabic, so that it could suitable for any time and any place in the world. This has been proved in the poetry reciting, which took place in Aljanoub, Beirut and some of the mountain villages in Lebanon as well as in the Soulat, Madba and Jordan Amman and Damascus, Syria Aleppo. This is trend is being now considered as a modern art school rooted in the modern vernacular poetic movement in the region.
Studies that dealt with his poetry have agreed that he exhibits a creative talent in poetry which remained throughout his carrier and is still rich.
In addition to his achievement in poetry, the poet contributed on leading and influential activities in the contemporary culture of Bahrain, on more than one level.
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