winner Poetry
Sixth Circle 1998-1999

• Born in Ramlat Anjab village, Manufiya, Egypt, 1935
• BA in Philosophy from Ain Shams University
• Sanabel culture magazine Editor-in-Chief, 1969-1972
• Iraqi Aqlam magazine editor, 1977-1983

Decision of the General Secretariat   

The Poetry Award is granted to Mohammed Afifi Mattar in recognition of his creative writings over more than four decades. His experience includes traditional poetry, modern poetry, international poetry, legend, broad philosophic knowledge, and commitment to causes. A comparison of his poetry books shows the extent of his development to reach a stage where his writings become a mixture of politics and Sufism, tangible and symbolic.

Mattar has turned his experience into a self and a collective expression at the same time. He has transformed his poems to criticise the present as it is, while yearning for a new horizon, underlining aesthetic, patriotic and moral values.

Awards

• State Merit Award of poetry
• Al Minia University’s Taha Hussain Award
• Poetry Award from Poetry International, Rotterdam, Netherlands
• Kavafis Award

Famous Works

• Silence Book
• The Hunger and Moon
• Drawings on the Night
• Book of Land and Blood
• Wailing’s Witness In the Age of Laughing
• The River Masked
• The Mud Talks
• Quartet of Joy
•  The Mummy’s Wild Celebrations

Studies

• Cracks in the Ancestors’ Mirrors
• Mahmood Sami Al Baroudi
• Spanish, Russian, Chinese and American Poems, Translations
• The Complete Works of Swedish Poetess Edith Soudar Grass, Translation
• Poems of the Greek Poet Odysseus Elets