The loss of his father—a tutelary figure, poet, writer, lawyer, and senator—left an indelible imprint upon his soul. From that moment on, poetry imposed itself as a bridge between absence and presence, a sanctuary where the dialogue continues with the one who inspired him. His first poem, Sur les Rails du bonheur (2010), was both an absolute commencement and a spiritual act of remembrance.
Moustapha’s love for poetry was nourished by his exiles and crossings. His voice finds a deep echo in the verses of Mahmoud Darwish, Nizar Qabbani, and Khalil Gibran, whose songs of earth, identity, and love he prolongs. To this Oriental sap responds the nomadism of Habib Ould Mahfoudh, whose circular march and memory of the sands accompany his pilgrim steps. This heritage blends with that of Africa and the fathers of Négritude, Léopold Sédar Senghor and Aimé Césaire, whose fleshly lyricism and quest for universal dignity he extends.
At this crossroads of cultures sits the musicality of Paul Verlaine, whose profound audacity taught his pen the art of liberating his inner song. Driven by this momentum, his voice opens to the freedom of Guillaume Apollinaire and invents its own new geometry: a punctuation liberated from scholastic rules, becoming organic, deploying breaths offered to the music of the text or erecting memorial locks to seal the instant. From this multiple filiation is born an intimate yet universal poetry, rooted in the sand but resolutely open to the winds of the world.
Parallel to his poetry, he embraced the rigor of law, walking with fervor in his father’s footsteps. His studies led him from the Mauritanian dunes to the universities of France, and onwards to Istanbul, where Ottoman memories anchored themselves to his journey. His path finally brought him to Montreal, Canada, where he completed his training for the Québec Bar in 2023.
Now established in Montreal, Moustapha unpacks his nomadic baggage. There, amidst the familiar fragrance of his Moorish tea, he writes poetry inhabited by the shadows of his father and his literary masters, while allowing his own voice to emerge — a voice shaped by grief, love, and the infinite quest for a place to belong. Through his verses, he pitches tents within the landscapes of heritage, love, hope, and desire, inviting the reader to enter and share the journey.
1. How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book was a spiritual threshold, an existential act of memory that anchored my nomadic breath into the eternity of the printed page. It taught me that poetry is not a mere luxury, but a biological necessity — a vital mechanism to inhabit my own displacement and map the fissures of the heart. Comparing my recent work to the previous is like watching an estuary meet the open sea. While my early poems sought the initial tracks of an elusive horizon, my current writing has entered the fire of the forge. The style has stripped itself of academic ornaments to embrace what I call the poetics of the hybrid—an organic movement where syntax bends on the anvil of raw rhythm, and silence itself becomes a structural pillar. It feels profoundly different because it no longer searches for a destination; it has accepted the trance of the journey. I am no longer just gathering the shards of my history; I am transmuting the very debris of exile into a sacred sanctuary where the soul can live and relive.
2. How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Poetry came to me as an absolute dictation, an internal Fado that left no room for the linear constraints of fiction or the rigid logic of non-fiction. When you are born with sand in your eyes, reality does not present itself as a structured narrative, but as a series of flashes, of mirages, and of intense vertical bursts. The tragic loss of my father—who was a poet, writer, lawyer, and senator—shattered any illusion of a quiet, prose-driven world. Fiction requires the patience of constructing castles; poetry demands the immediate release of the Cri (the Cry). It is the only space where absence and presence can fuse, where the wound can be instantly transmuted into a melody. I did not choose poetry; I surrendered to its biological imperative because Du kannst, denn du sollst.
3. How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
A project does not begin with an outline; it undergoes a long, invisible gestation within the subconscious before rising like a sudden wave. The actual act of writing happens in a state of high-velocity trance—it is a rapid, incandescent rush where the poem spills onto the white page all at once. Therefore, my first drafts appear remarkably close to their final shape, almost pristine in their raw rhythm. I do not keep copious notes or sketches. However, this lightning-fast birth is immediately followed by a conscious, almost surgical craft on the anvil. I return to the text to strip away the rhetorical fat, ensuring that every word becomes a monument and every line finds its asymmetric, untamed truth.
4. Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
A poem always begins with a single motif — a fragment of a landscape, a sensory vibration, or a rhythmic stuttering of the soul. I do not write isolated, standalone pieces, nor do I plan a book with a rigid, cold architecture. Instead, I work on a continuous, flowing tapestry where each poem acts as an autonomous echo of a larger, collective consciousness. My writing is a series of obsessive variations. I throw these fragments into the fire to extract only the rebellious, unyielding lines, allowing the book to organically compile itself around recurring leitmotivs that resist time and absence.
5. Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Public readings are the physical consummation of my creative process. Because my poetry is deeply rooted in the oral traditions of the desert and the rhythmic cadences of the drum, the text is never truly complete until it is breathed into the air. I deeply enjoy readings because they strip the poem of its silent, paper armor and return it to its primal nature: a shared ritual, a communal trance. The stage becomes a collective space where my enjambments and horizontal tabulations act as musical cues, allowing the audience to feel the exact weight of my breaths and silences.
6. Do have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
My writing operates at the intersection of phenomenology and clinical art-therapy — what I term a phenopoetry. I am deeply concerned with the deconstruction of academic grammar to uncover a more primal, authentic tongue. Through my work, I am not trying to answer questions with intellectual formulas; rather, I am investigating how a fragmented identity can heal itself through the loop of musical repetition. The current question of our time is the crisis of displacement and spiritual nudity. In a world filled with digital noise and synthetic connections, the ultimate question is: How do we reclaim the sacredness of the Je (the Self) and transform the scars of exile into a habitable territory?
7. What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
The current culture often tries to reduce the writer to a mere producer of content or a decorator of phrases. But the true writer holds a sacred, almost terrifying office. Our role is to be the memory-keepers and the subverters of the cynical realism that paralyzes the modern soul. The writer must be an artisan of the forge who plunges a blade into the dead silence of the night to awaken the conscience of the world. We must refuse the temptation of polished, safe language. The role of the poet should be that of a Chérubin émissaire—a messenger who stands in the ruins, accepts the vulnerability of the human condition, and defiantly shouts an unyielding hymn to Life.
8. Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
It is both a fierce battle and an essential blessing. Working with an editor who understands the temperature of your text is like having a companion in the forge. It can be difficult because my poetry relies on an unconventional geometry — a deliberate suppression of academic punctuation and a defense of the asymmetric line. A rigid editor might mistake a calculated rupture for a mistake. But an enlightened editor acts as a mirror; they help you ensure that your omissions are sharp, your majuscules steles (monumental capitals) are powerful, and that the text is entirely stripped of any decorative dross.
9. What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
The most profound advice I carry with me comes from Paul Verlaine’s poetic decree: “De la musique avant toute chose / Et pour cela préfère l'Impair” (Music before all else / And for that, prefer the Asymmetric). This single line unlocked my entire relationship with the language. It gave my pen the courage to reject academic straightness, to embrace the beauty of the hesitation, and to understand that the truest rhythm always lies within the broken, uneven spaces of the line.
10. What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I do not keep a clockwork, conventional writing routine, as the trance cannot be scheduled. My typical day begins in the crisp morning of Montreal, balancing the strict, intellectual rigor of my legal profession with the nomadic currents of my soul. The day opens with a sensory anchor: the slow, methodical preparation of my traditional thé Maure (Moorish tea). As the scent of the tea fills the room, it conjures the shadows of my father and my ancestors. I sit in that quiet space, staring at the white page or the screen, letting the immediate presence of the morning caress the mind until the words begin to flow.
11. When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for inspiration?
When the flow dries up, I return to the masters who first taught me how to breathe. I immerse myself in the deep, melancholic sands of Habib Ould Mahfoudh, the majestic elegies of Mahmoud Darwish, the incandescent prose of Arthur Rimbaud, or the intoxicating, unpunctuated freedom of Guillaume Apollinaire. If the page remains stubborn, I step away from literature entirely and listen to the rain, or I let the cyclical, mathematical perfection of Vivaldi install itself within me. I turn back to the Rien (the Nothingness)—that sacred, full vacuum of the subconscious—and wait patiently for the accident that will spark the next fire.
12. What fragrance reminds you of home?
The sharp, smoky aroma of loose green tea leaves caramelizing over hot coals, mingled with the fresh scent of wild mint—the unforgettable fragrance of the thé Maure (Moorish tea). It is a scent that carries the immense weight of the Mauritanian dunes, the dry breath of the Harmattan, and the gentle laughter of my childhood. No matter how far my peregrinations take me, that smoke instantly reconstructs my home within my chest.
13. David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science, or visual art?
Music is the absolute twin sister of my poetry. My lines are heavily structured by musical forms— whether it is the raw, percussive power of metallic cymbals, the traditional strings of the West African kora, or the sophisticated architecture of European classical music, like a mass or a Wagner concerto. Nature also exerts a powerful physical influence: the vast, silent geometry of the desert dunes, the profound solitude found while hiking in the mountains, and the erratic, unpredictable movement of migratory bird flights are shapes that directly dictate the movement of my verses on the page.
14. What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Outside of the great Arabic and African icons like Nizar Qabbani, Kahlil Gibran, Senghor, and Césaire, French avant-garde poetry is fundamental to my existence. The works of Guillaume Apollinaire, particularly his masterpiece Alcools, alongside the structural precision of René Char or Stéphane Mallarmé, are central to my life. His revolutionary decision to remove punctuation to let the pure, naked rhythm of the language emerge completely altered my vision of what a modern poem can do. He taught me that a poem can hold the entire modern world—its bars, its streets, its heartbreaks—while remaining deeply mystical.
15. What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I would love to collaborate directly with contemporary musicians and dancers to translate my poetry into a multi-sensory performance piece. I want to see my horizontal tabulations and my unpunctuated rhythms physically interpreted by the movement of a body or the vibration of an instrument in real-time, creating an environment where the audience doesn't just read the poem, but walks inside its trance.
16. If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I am in the unique position of already living that alternate life. Had I not been a poet, I would be—and I am—a jurist. I completed my Québec Bar training in 2023. Walking in the footsteps of my late father, who was a brilliant lawyer, allows me to honor his memory everyday. There is a fascinating, secret symmetry between law and poetry: both require an absolute respect for the power of the Word, a surgical precision in language, and a deep desire to bring justice and order to the chaos of human relationships.
17. What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
The realization that writing was my only chance at survival, my only true art-cure. When you carry the heavy weight of dual origins, of multiple exiles, and the overwhelming absence of a monumental father, you cannot simply exist in the world passively. You must build a sanctuary. I write because the spoken word fades, but the engraved line fixes the soul. I write because it is the only way to catch the insubordinate threads of my life, throw them into the fire, and extract something unique and eternal.
18. What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The last great book that shook me to my core was Alcools by Guillaume Apollinaire, which I recently revisited. Its fluid modernity, its lack of punctuation, and its ability to blend the ancient mythologies of the Rhine with the raw energy of the twentieth century remain an endless source of artistic wonder. The last great film that deeply moved me was Timbuktu by Abderrahmane Sissako. Its visual poetry, its dignity in the face of oppression, and its profound rendering of the sacred silence of the desert dunes mirrored the deepest landscapes of my own soul.
19. What are you currently working on?
I am currently putting the
absolute final touches on my upcoming poetry manuscript, titled Leitmotive. It is an intense, deeply
woven architecture spanning 108 pages, designed as a symphonic suite of obsessive
variations and emotional transmutations. What has been shared
of it so far is merely a
glimpse into a much larger, continuous canvas.
After exploring the deep sands of memory and displacement, Leitmotive stands as a definitive,
avant-garde manifesto where syntax is deliberately broken on the anvil to extract a raw, healing
chant, completely liberated
from punctuation. It is a book that fully assumes its repetitions and
its cries, treating the entire poetic experience as an ultimate, sovereign Therapy.
No comments:
Post a Comment