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Hassan Najmi was born in 1960 in Ibn Ahme, Morocco. He has a diploma in Arabic Literature from Rabat College of Literature and Humanities, and has become a well-known poet, author and journalist.
He worked for many years as arts editor of Al-Ittihad al-Ishtiraki newspaper, and was President of the Moroccan Union of Writers from 1998 to 2005 and was for some years director-general of the Book and Publications Department of Morocco's Ministry of Culture. He was a founding member of the House of Poetry in Morocco in 1996.
In 1977, he started publishing his poems in various newspapers. His first poetry collection was Lavenders’ Princedom (1982) and has been followed by nine further collections and two novels and two books of essays, one with the artist Kacimi.
He has two works in English translation, a novel Gertrude (trs Roger Allen, 2013) and a poetry collection The Blueness of the Evening: Selected Poems of Hassan Najmi (trs Mbarek Sryfi and Eric Sellin, 2018).
A chapter from Gertrude, translated by Nancy Roberts, was published in Banipal 43 – Celebrating Denys Johnson-Davies (2012), and can be read here.
Contributor's Issues
Banipal 35 - Writing in Dutch (2009)
Banipal 43 - Celebrating Denys Johnson-Davies (2012)
Banipal 51 - Celebrating Saadi Youssef (2014)
Banipal 74 - Celebrating Khalida Said and Modern Arabic Poetry (Summer 2022)