Sana’a city as an ecocultural landscape: a reading in the poetry of Abdul Aziz al-Maqaleh

This research delves into how Sana’a city is formed into an ecocultural landscape and the significance it holds in moulding Yemeni culture and identity in the poetry of Abdul Aziz al-Maqaleh, one of the most eminent poets of Yemeni modernist movement. His poetry reveals a unique ecocultural vision, special poetic voice, and experimental poetic forms with a distinct stamp. Al-Maqaleh’s vision of the urban space is revealed in his poetic work, The Book of Sana’a, which consists of fifty-six poems threaded along by a central theme revolving around Sana’a city’s natural world and culture. Sana’a emerges not just as a physical place but as an emotional, cultural, and symbolic space filled with history, memory, and personal resonance. Thus, this study attempts to discover the meaning layers embedded in the city landscape and how they reveal the interactional relationship between culture and geography, emphasizing how culture and space mutually influence each other. Through reading six poems, a symbiotic relationship between Sana’a landscape and culture becomes evident. Al-Maqaleh turns out to hold a unique ecocultural vision who has reimagined the city’s space, culture, and history. As a theoretical framework, this research adopts both cultural landscape concept and ecocriticsm to strengthen its thesis.