CAIRO: Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad Negm, renowned for his revolutionary poetry, died on Tuesday at the age of 84, friends said.

“Ahmed Fouad Negm passed away. He was 84,” publisher Mohammed Hashem told AFP.

Negm spent a total of 18 years in jail for his strident criticism of Egyptian governments.

Acclaimed as a poet of the people, Negm had a decades-long association with Egyptian composer Sheikh Imam, and was widely regarded as a folk hero.

He was laid to rest later on Tuesday, after a funeral attended by some 200 family and friends.

Fellow poet Zine El Abidine Fouad lamented Negm’s death as an “enormous loss,” saying he was an artist who had been “present on the streets since 1968” and was a man “of all struggles in Egypt.”

Leading leftist Hamdeen Sabbahi, a former presidential candidate, said that through his poems Negm inspired “millions of Egyptians and Arabs” to “love equality and fight injustice.”

In 2007, the United Nations appointed Negm “ambassador of the poor.”

Earlier this year, he received the Prince Claus award from the Netherlands for his “unwavering advocacy on behalf of the poor.”

Son of a police officer and a housewife, Negm was born in the Nile Delta province of Sharqia in 1929 and was one of 17 brothers.