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Born to a modest Alawite farming family in January 1930, Adonis hails from the village of al-Qassabin near the city of Latakia in western Syria. He was unable to afford formal schooling for most of his childhood, and his early education consisted of learning the Quran in the local kuttab (mosque-affiliated school) and memorizing classical Arabic poetry, to which his father had introduced him.

In 1944, despite the animosity of the village chief and his father's reluctance, the young poet managed to recite one of his poems before Shukri al-Quwatli, the president of the newly-established Republic of Syria, who was on a visit to al-Qassabin. After admiring the boy's verses, al-Quwatli asked him if there was anything he needed help with. "I want to go to school," responded the young poet, and his wish was soon fulfilled in the form of a scholarship to the French lycée at Tartus. The school, the last French Lycée school in Syria at the time, was closed in 1945, and Adonis was transferred to other national schools before graduating in 1949. He was a good student, and managed to secure a government scholarship. In 1950 Adonis published his first collection of verse, Dalila, as he joined the Syrian University (now Damascus University) to study law and philosophy, graduating in 1954 with a BA in philosophy. He later earned a doctoral degree in Arabic literature from Saint Joseph University in 1973.
Adonis started making images using calligraphy, colour and figurative gestures around the year 2002. In 2012, a major tribute to Adonis, including an exhibition of his drawings and a series of literary events was organized in The Mosaic Rooms in West London.
When you say “Arabic literature”, one of the first names that comes to mind is “Syrian poet”. But those definitions are narrow. The geography he addresses and the history he speaks from are endless. His philosophical and political writings, like his poems, resonate all over the world. It is not for nothing that his name is mentioned in the Nobel Prize every year. It is difficult not to have read him at all, and moreover, to “not be caught” by him – as Orhan Koçak beautifully puts it. We always come across him somewhere. But as poetry, but as prose, but as interviews.