Biography

The Life

Nouri al-Jarrah · London

One of the most influential contemporary poets of the Arabic-speaking world.

Nouri al-Jarrah is a Syrian-British poet and journalist, born in Damascus in 1956. He left Syria in the early 1980s, spent formative years between Beirut and Nicosia working in the Arab diaspora press, and moved to London in 1986, where he has lived and written ever since. From London he has published over sixteen collections of poetry and founded several of the most influential Arabic literary magazines of his generation.

His verse draws on Greek and Mediterranean mythology, Arabic folktales, and legend, while reflecting on metaphysics, exile, memory, and — most urgently — the Syrian civil war and the refugee crisis that followed. Reading al-Jarrah is entering a poetics in which the sea, the city, and the body of the exile become the material of a single continuous elegy.

His work has been translated into English, French, Italian, Spanish, Persian, Greek, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Kurmanjî, and Hebrew. He co-founded the Centre for Arabic Geographical Literature and the Ibn Battuta Prize for Travel Literature in Abu Dhabi in 2000, and co-founded the Syrian Writers Association in 2012, of which he was elected president in 2017. In 2023 he received the Prix Max Jacob and the Primo Napoli Prize.

Timeline

Cities of a life

Click a moment to reveal the work, magazines, and institutions that grew from it.

Nouri al-Jarrah was born in Damascus in January 1956, in the old city, at a moment when Syria was still finding its footing after independence from France a decade earlier. Damascus was one of the great cultural and intellectual capitals of the Arab world — a city of poets, printers, and political clubs — and the region was alive with Pan-Arab nationalism, the aftermath of the 1948 Nakba, and the debates that would soon carry Syria into short-lived union with Nasser's Egypt. He grew up among the alleys, courtyards, and libraries of Damascus, in a household and a city shaped by that ferment.
He moved to Beirut in the early 1980s and took over the editorial direction of Fikr (فكر), a literary magazine founded by Henri Hamati and Nasri al-Sayegh. He also worked at the leading daily Al-Safir, where he met the Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali. During the 1982 Israeli siege of Beirut his first collection The Boy (الصبي) appeared; he was part of a circle of poets resisting the occupation through writing, and was closely involved in Palestinian cultural and political advocacy. He later worked at Al-Hawadith magazine and Al-Hayat newspaper before leaving Beirut for Cyprus.
- ◆The Boy — 1982
Mid-1980s work with Arab cultural periodicals in Nicosia, editing and contributing to the diaspora press that carried Arabic letters across the Mediterranean.
Moves to London, where he has lived and worked since. From London he founds and edits landmark Arabic literary magazines and publishes a decade of new collections.
Co-founds the Centre for Arabic Geographical Literature in Abu Dhabi and, three years later, the Ibn Battuta Prize for Travel Literature — the leading Arabic prize for travel writing.
The late-2000s London period: the collected poetical works appear in their first two volumes, Letters of Odysseus is published, and the State Prize for Children's Literature in Qatar recognises The Pillow Book — a decade of consolidation before the Syrian war reshaped the work entirely.
From 2011 to the present: the Syrian war and the refugee crossings of the Mediterranean become the central material of the work. New collections answer the catastrophe directly, translations spread to eleven languages, he founds Al-Jadeed and helps found the Syrian Writers Association, and international recognition follows — culminating in the Prix Max Jacob and the Premio Napoli in 2023.

Literary Philosophy

Poetry, the Poet, Exile, and Return

"Poetry is not what we write about exile — poetry is the country we build when the country is taken from us."
— Nouri al-Jarrah

"The Arabic language is my only house that no one can bomb."
— Nouri al-Jarrah

Further excerpts from the essay "Poetry, the Poet, Exile, and Return" will be published here.