Elia Abu Madi (also known as Elia D. Madey; ) (May 15, 1890 – November 23, 1957) was a Lebanese-born American poet.

Early life

Abu Madi was born in the village of Al-Muhaydithah, now part of Bikfaya, Lebanon, on May 15, 1890 to a Greek Orthodox Christian family. At the age of 11 he moved to (Alexandria, Egypt) where he worked with his uncle.

Career and Works

In 1911, Elia Abu Madi published his first collection of poems, Tazkar al-Madi. Shortly after, he was exiled by the Ottoman authorities and he left Egypt for the United States, where he settled in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1916, he moved to New York City and began a career in journalism. In New York, Abu Madi met and worked with a number of Arab-American poets including Gibran Khalil Gibran. He married the daughter of Najeeb Diab, editor of the Arabic-language magazine Meraat-ul-Gharb, and became its chief editor in 1918. His second poetry collection, Diwan Iliya Abu Madi, was published in New York in 1919; his third and most important collection, Al-Jadawil ("The Streams"), appeared in 1927. His other books were Al-Khama'il ("The Thickets") (1940) and Tibr wa Turab (posthumous, 1960). In 1929, Abu Madi founded his own periodical, As-Samir, in Brooklyn. It began as a monthly but after a few years it was published five times a week. His poems are very well known among Arabs; poet, author, and journalist Gregory Orfalea wrote that "his poetry is as commonplace and memorized in the Arab world as that of Robert Frost is in ours."

Scholarly criticism

Sources