This issue explores and celebrates the development of modernism in modern Arabic poetry:
• Main feature is on vanguard Syrian literary critic Khalida Said with an especially commissioned interview by Dima al-Choukr
• Articles on Khalida Said’s incisive and encyclopaedic works of literary criticism by Abdo Wazen, Fares Youakim and Dima al-Choukr
• Plus Fatima Al-Muhsin writing about Said’s work on Arab women writers, and Akl Awit celebrating Said, the visionary critic
• Selected essays by Khalida Said – on the modernist Arabic poetry movement, a portrait of her sister the poet Saniya Salih, and on Gibran’s all-encompassing vision of creativity.
• Historic interviews with poets Sargon Boulus (1944-2007) and Etel Adnan (1925-2021), first time translated into English
• Poems by four modernist poets – Khaled Mattawa, Liana Badr, Naji Rahim and Basim Al-Ansar
• Articles by Salah Niazi, Mahmoud Chreih and Abdo Wazen on two major pioneers in Arabic prose poetry – Iraqi-Jewish Murad Mikhail (1906–1986) and Syrian-Palestinian Tawfiq Sayigh (1923-1971).