Abdellatif Laabi

Who is Abdellatif Laabi?

Abdellatif Laâbi is a Moroccan poet, born in 1942 in Fes, Morocco.

Laâbi, then teaching French, founded with other poets the artistic journal Souffles, an important literary review in 1966. It was considered as a meeting point of some poets who felt the emergency of a poetic stand and revival, but which, very quickly, crystallized all Moroccan creative energies: painters, film-makers, men of theatre, researchers and thinkers. It was banned in 1972, but throughout its short life, it opened up to cultures from other countries of the Maghreb and those of the Third World.

Abdellatif Laâbi was imprisoned, tortured and sentenced to ten years in prison for "crimes of opinion" and served a sentence from 1972-1980. He was, in 1985, forced into exile in France.