Ali Abukhattab is a poet, literary critic, translator, and independent researcher whose work bridges literature, philosophy, religion, and political thought. He studied English literature and translation, developing a strong foundation that has shaped his multilingual and cross-cultural approach to writing and analysis.
Over the years, he has published several books and contributed to numerous literary anthologies. His critical essays, along with political and cultural articles, have appeared in a wide range of newspapers and journals, reflecting his deep engagement with contemporary issues and intellectual discourse. In addition to his work for adult readers, he has also written children’s literature, demonstrating a commitment to nurturing imagination and critical thinking across generations.
Ali Abukhattab has been an active participant in cultural life, frequently appearing as a lecturer at literary and intellectual events, and as a political analyst on television programs. He is also the co-founder of the “Utopia” cultural commune, an initiative that organized and supported many literary and intellectual activities in the Gaza Strip, creating space for dialogue, creativity, and free expression.
Due to increasing pressures and threats related to his independent cultural and intellectual work, he relocated to Egypt, where he continued to participate actively in Cairo’s vibrant cultural scene. With the support of the International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN), he later moved to Molde, Norway, as a Guest Writer, receiving recognition and support from ICORN and Norwegian PEN.
Currently based in Molde, Norway, Ali Abukhattab continues his literary, critical, and translation work in exile. His voice remains committed to the values of freedom of expression, cultural dialogue, and human dignity. As a political thinker, critic, poet, and translator, he represents a powerful example of how literature and thought can cross borders, connect cultures, and speak for those navigating displacement and identity in a globalized world.
Ali Abukhattab’s poems create a strong inner world, language is full of tension and struggle. His poetry asks questions and pushes meaning to its limits, often standing very close to silence and loss. In Empty the poem moves like a slow ritual, time and memory shape the speaker from the inside. The voice keeps moving forward even while breaking apart, and the repeated call to rise turns the poem into an act of staying alive. In why cant I write the poet speaks directly about the difficulty of writing, using simple contrasts to show how the self feels caught between strength and weakness, clarity and mystery, thought and language. Waiting for Godot again presents a long moment of waiting where hope slowly disappears. Time becomes painful, words turn against the speaker, and the poem ends with death as the only arrival. Variations on Genesis retells old creation stories in a new way, using desire violence and crime to question ideas about God fate good and evil. These poems ask readers to think about responsibility and human choices instead of accepting ready made beliefs. In Trilogy for the sea the tone becomes calmer and more sensory, showing writing speaking and seeing as acts that continue even in storms and uncertainty. Discourse of I You is a powerful dialogue between two voices that represent different sides of the self, such as body and soul clarity and confusion closeness and distance. Throughout his work Ali Abukhattab writes with honesty and intensity, shaped by exile deep thinking and lived experience, using poetry as a way to face reality and to keep speaking when silence feels near.
Empty
The wind has its logic..
And you walk against the saltiness of time.
The place’s smell croaks in you.
You spin your death by hands made up of holes.
You stick to the wind’s hissing
Your self burnt on the flame of fragmentation
You create your ceremonies
mixing the tears by the fantom foam
Your crushed myth rises from the poem hell
Go up
Go up
Go up
Do not stop on the tip of chant
I see them approaching from your echo
I see them slipping from the cough attendants
Escape ,
Follow the prophecy of wind
+++
why can’t i write?
(1)
Because I’m stronger than an idea,
And weaker than a language.
(2)
Because I’m bigger than an illusion
And smaller than a fact
(3)
Because I’m clearer than a nothingness
And more mysterious than an existence
+++
“Waiting for Godot” again
I, in the first of distance, was waiting for him.
As a defeated prophet
The time scorpions are biting me
The wild age words are stoning me
The weakness is spreading into the rocks
I said he must come
But they left me
I waited till the dates evaporated
.. … .. … .
Nothing came except death.
+++
Variations on Genesis
(1)
In the beginning was the desire,
Was going around the nowhere,
Embracing the illusion,
So it died as smoke.
When it ecstasised by fact light
It got lost in the silence of time.
(2)
In the beginning was the bomb,
The god lighted its fuse,
So he dispersed as fragment.
(3)
In the beginning the apple was in the hand of Eve
And Cain’s hand carried the knife
Abel’s neck bled
When Adam had eaten the apple.
(4)
In the beginning was the crime;
It’s the first* and the last. And was the spite; It’s the visible
And the hidden*
(5)
In the beginning the God wrote his autobiography
On the kept sheet
And when destiny bewildered us
We said; the Good and peace are from the God
And the evil and war are from the Devil
(6)
Excuse for the Devil
- some names of the Islamic God.
+++
Trilogy for the sea
(1)
The narcissus’s desire
Draws abstraction for the finite
Picks, from my smell, an ink
And I still write.
(2)
A violet rests to steep
In this green storm
My pen swims like the jellyfish
My face is a rocky jut
My lips are a remains of moss
And I still speak.
(3)
The coast is the start of the flock
The fish fished the sea color
My eyes smell the cloud
And I still look.
+++
Discourse of I\You
I am the shadow inflammation
You are the darkness drizzle
I am the mirrors’ masturbation
You are the mud labyrinth
I am the tale fire
You are a poem of dusk
I stumbles in the dream lanes
Your have sexy dreams in barbarian climate
I stare in the curse rump
You ride the exhalation tremble
I ride the horse of chaos
You fall at a distance of two seconds from my soul
I stand up leaned on the space
You rest on the branches of air.
I am a soul practices its secret habit
You are a body exercises the ceremonies of desolation
I; my nerves are the memory of dust
You act the tragedy of mote
I build the kingdom of yelping
You vibrates among the memoirs’ bows
I am killed by the clearness
You suffer the ambiguity coldness
