Born in 1953 in the Carrières centrales at Casablanca, Abdallah Zrika spent his childhood in the shantytowns of Ben Msîk. At the age of twelve, he wrote his first poems. In 1977, he published, at his own expense, Danse de la tête et de la rose, which enjoyed much success. The poet’s Moroccan youth, in particular, made him a voice for an ideal of freedom and a desire for life. Wherever he read his work, it was to full audiences. His poems have been published in numerous newspapers and magazines. Those early poems, which were widely read in the student world, caused him to be arrested in 1978 charged with disturbing the peace and being a public nuisance. He spent two years in prison before being tried. The incriminated works were pulped. After his arrest he carried on writing all the time. Released in 1980, he published Rires de l’arbre de palabre and Fleurs de pierre. Since then he has published other books, and is numbered among the most important Moroccan poets.