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The Poetic Energy of Memory as a Tool for Reinterpretation in “The Tablet of Memory” by Poet Mohamed Lembarki
The poetry collection “The Tablet of Memory” by poet Mohamed Lembarki stands as a work that thrives on the sensitive boundary between autobiography and poetry without surrendering fully to either. From the very first pages, the poet makes it clear that he does not aim to write a complete biography or delve into the metaphysics of pure poetry, but rather seeks to attempt to stabilize the shadow, document the transient, and record the echo of silence, as stated in the book’s introduction: “These pages do not refer to a lament for endings, nor do they fulfill beginnings… They are attempts to stabilize the shadow, to record the passage of the transient, to document the echo of silence.”
This definition transcends the aesthetic dimension, transforming into a key to the writing strategy where the poems open memory to its hesitant possibilities and shattered scenes. Here, the self is not a central subject but rather a surface traversed by time, places, and voices.
From the first poem, the collection is founded on a dual movement: outward (the sun, the wind, the street, war, cities) and inward (nostalgia, solitude, primal questions, childhood memory). This movement grants the texts a distinctly cinematic quality, as the poem shifts through scenes and images rather than through intellectual discourse, as seen in the poem “Towards the Sun,” where the poet invokes his childhood, fears, and initial awareness of the world through a sensory language rooted in light, shadow, wind, and sound.
A significant feature of this work is the dialectic of presence and absence; the poet writes from an in-between space: between childhood and adulthood, between village and city, between memory and nostalgia. In the text “In My Remote Home,” for instance, the reader is presented with precise scenes of cold, snow, coffee, and the window—scenes that do not evoke the past but establish the present of longing itself: “In my remote home… I am trapped at night on one side of my face, and I see in my black coffee, without grain… I follow its steam towards the window.”
This pictorial sensibility goes beyond simply describing the everyday to reveal the poetic energy of memory, not as a mere repository of things but as a device for reinterpretation of what has occurred and what could have happened.
The collection does not limit itself to intimate memories but also opens up to collective memory and human tragedy, as seen in the poem “Had,” where war and destruction are revisited from the perspective of a woman standing on the ruins of the city: “On the ruins of the city I stood… smiling at the emergence of life in her womb… giving birth once again to those who will build its walls.”
This inclination towards “life against destruction” is one of the distinctive tones of the collection, where femininity emerges as a force of rescue, creation, and nurturing, not merely as ornamental symbolism or linguistic embellishment.
On the level of language, Lembarki oscillates between a transparent narrative akin to prose and a poetic condensation that reshapes language through internal rhythm, metaphor, and imagery. He recognizes that poetry does not suffice with rhetoric but seeks an existential authenticity in confronting life’s great questions: Who are we? What do we do with our memory? How do we survive time?
“The Tablet of Memory” is neither an autobiography nor a nostalgia collection; it is a work about humanity as it retrieves itself through language. It is an invitation to read life through small details and a reminder that what ultimately remains is what is written against oblivion.
