Hassan El Ouazzani (1970) is one of Morocco’s most important young poets. He belongs to the generation of poets who in the 1990s made the prose-poem leap into prominence in Moroccan poetry. This generation, which also includes poets such as Jalal El Hakmaoui, Mahmoud Abdelghani, Abdelilah Salhi and Yassin Adnan, has effected a postmodern paradigm shift in the poetry scene in Morocco.

Hassan El Ouazzani’s poems draw considerably on mythology, but in a postmodern spirit, blending mythical allusions with everyday experience. His poetry also draws on surrealist imagery, used deliberately to deflate the Romantic and Modernist notion of the poet-hero so dear to previous generations. Moreover, what makes El Ouazzani’s poetry so enjoyable is to a great extent its aura of intimacy and the simplicity of its language, which the poet achieves without sacrificing depth and meaning. Of him German poet Tobias Burghardt wrote: “The poet, whose presence was noted at the Medellin Poetry Festival in Colombia, uses paradox to create a coherent poetic system.” His first collection of poems, Hudnatun ma (A Truce), published in 1997 by the Union of Moroccan Writers, exemplifies all these characteristics.

Formerly the secretary-general of the Moroccan House of Poetry, Hassan El Ouazzani has also published La production littéraire marocaine 1929-1999: Bio-bibliographie et étude socio-bibliométrique (Rabat: Union of Moroccan Writers, 2002). His poems have been translated and published in diverse international poetry magazines such as Prometeo (Colombia), Kalathos (Venezuela), Ila (Germany), and Les soirs rouges (Canada). El Ouazzani has participated in various international festivals of poetry, such as Medellin (Colombia), Trois-Rivières (Canada), Lodève (France), Maillorca (Spain), Istanbul (Turkey), and London (United Kingdom). His poems have also appeared in Spanish Poemas para la vida, translated from the Arabic by Jimena Londono (Mexico: collectivo Zone Alta, 2001). In French he has published Répertoire des écrivains marocains (Rabat: Union of Moroccan Writers, 1993).