VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents a Special Lecture:  Poet Adonis on the Need for an Arab Revival, Sunday, October 17 at 2:00pm,  at the Caroline Wiess Law Building.

Nominated three times for the Nobel Prize, Adonis (pictured, photo by Petr Machan/Prague Writers' Festiva) has been called "today´s most daring and provocative Arab poet," while his influence on Arabic literature has been likened to that of T. S. Eliot´s on English-language verse, and to David Hume on Western philosophical thought. 

Adonis has written extensively on the need to change the framework of both thinking and reasoning in the Arab world in order to stop the disintegration of Arab culture. In his own poetry—which is experimental in form and prophetic in tone—Adonis breaks with tradition to liberate his work from the chains of the "text".

In this rare Houston appearance, Adonis addresses the factors that hinder intellectual advancement in the Arab world, and why a new way of thinking is not an option, but an urgent necessity.

Adonis has written more than 20 books in his native Arabic, including the pioneering work An Introduction to Arab Poetics. Adonis received the Bjørnson Prize in 2007, the first International Nâzim Hikmet Poetry Award, the Syria-Lebanon Best Poet Award, and the highest award of the International Poem Biennial in Brussels. He lives in Paris. 

This program is generously co-sponsored by the Arab American Educational Foundation. This program is presented in Arabic and English. Simultaneous translation provided.

A reception and book signing follow the program. Adonis´s newly released English-language anthology, Adonis: Selected Poems will be for sale in the MFAH Retail Store.