Saad bin Hammed bin Maged became a winner of the Socotri poetry competition that took place on Socotra in the last week of December under the auspices of Abdulrahman Al-Eryani, the Minister of Water and Environment. Nine local poets competed in reciting poems that they had composed themselves in traditional Socotri language. The 3rd year of the competition became as usual the biggest cultural event of the year and was organized by Socotra Culture and Heritage Society with the aim to preserve threatened Socotri traditions.
This year’s participants were divided into three groups, each of them presenting their poems in one of three consecutive evenings. The great final was held on December 29, 2010 and the winner was triumphantly carried out on shoulders of happy fans from his village. The audience of each evening reached more than one thousand men, many of them arriving on trucks from distant countryside.
“The competition has been very popular since its beginning in 2008,” says Ismael Mohammed Ahmed, an organizer of the competition within the Socotra Culture and Heritage Society. He is delighted that majority of the audience were young boys and men from villages where Socotri language has been spoken yet and Socotri traditions observed. Ismael’s hope that ancient Socotri language will not perish was revived last year when a 25 year old man became a winner beating out his much older and experienced rivals. Ismael himself supports the survival of Socotri traditions by recording old poems, tales and songs and keeping them for future generations.
For next year, Ismael’s ambition is to extend the poetry competition into a festival of various Socotri arts including singing and playing musical instruments.
Socotri is an ancient language of pre-islamic origin related to the Mahri language spoken in Mahra region in the Southern Arabia. It is unwritten and quite different from Modern Arabic which is taught at schools nowadays. Along the coast of Socotra island, the inhabitants speak both languages fluently but in the mountains, old folks and people without education still communicate in Socotri.
The 2010 Socotri poetry competition was kindly supported by Abdulkareem Al-Eryani, a special adviser to the president of Yemen, and Ali Saed Sheibani, the sheikh of Socotris living in the Emirates, and by a Socotri poetry lover Yahya Beidhobo.