The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice

• Examines the ‘new genre’ of the prose poem as a poetic practice and as a critical lens
• Adopts a case-study approach to a number of poets, including: Adonis, Muhammad al-Maghut, Salim Barakat, Mahmoud Darwish and Wadi‘ Saʿadeh
• Adopts a comparative approach across time periods, genres, identity and cultural traditions

The Arabic prose poem gave rise to a profound, contentious and continuing debate about Arabic poetry: its definition, its limits and its relation to its readers. Huda J. Fakhreddine examines the history of the prose poem, its claims of autonomy and distance from its socio-political context, and the anxiety and scandal it generated.

When the modernist movement in Arabic poetry was launched in the 1940s, it threatened to blur the distinctions between poetry and everything else. The Arabic prose poem is probably the most subversive and extreme manifestation of this blurring. It is often described as an oxymoron, a non-genre, an anti-genre, a miracle and even a conspiracy.