Contemporary Poetry from the Heart of Sefrou

Soufiane Elouahhabie is an oral and written poet from Sefrou. He has published his work in print (click here for a link to an earlier post of two poems by him) and competed in National poetry competitions.

We recently filmed Soufiane performing one of his poems, titled Sefrou. The poem opens with the line, ’Sefrou nass’ (Sefrou sleeps). For Soufiane, poetry is a way of gaining true richness – cultural richness.

Check out Soufiane’s performance of Sefrou in the video below. He performs the poem in Moroccan Arabic (darija). We have chosen not to translate the poem from darija. Partly this is due to the difficulty of translating poetry, but also because subtitles distract from the image and sound. Try watching, we have found that Soufiane’s enchanting oral performance skills communicate the beauty of the poem to non-darija speakers, even if they cannot understand its meaning.

Next week, we will be publishing a video interview with Soufiane, with English subtitles, where he talks to us about the meaning of this poem, his poetic method, and what Sefrou and multiculturalism means to him.