Sayed Mahmoud celebrates the reissuing of the Nineties' foremost avant garde journal Only a week ago, the cultural sphere was taken aback by the unexpected appearance of a new issue of Al-Kitabah Al-Ukhra, which though occasional, had not appeared since the late 1990s. This is the first volume of a new issue of a publication that has been called, by Richard Jacquemond, the most important Egyptian magazine in terms of adopting avant garde conceptions. Al-Kitabah Al-Ukhra, or "The Other Writing", first appeared in the early 1990s, partly in response to strong statements by the Sixties poet Ahmad Abdel-Mo'ti Hegazi, then newly appointed editor of the state-supported magazine Ibda', or "Creativity", in which he railed against the new generation of poets, notably their use of unmetred prose, and affirmed that his magazine would be "for the elite, not the rabble". In some sense the first few issues were a cry of anger -- a sort of Howl of the Nineties in Egypt -- yet by the time it reached 24 issues (the sum total of the first edition), it had transcended the process of responding to Hegazi to a space in which it could ask more articulate questions about the new reality of culture, reviving Egyptian surrealism and questioning religious discourse, for example -- a space where independent and individual tendencies in culture became paramount and were expressed in, among other ways, a rejection of the cultural establishment. For his part Hesham Qeshtah, the founding editor, refused to admit that the magazine was ever or in any way a reaction to Hegazi's statements. He conceives of it, rather, as a home for "the foetus of the prose poem"; it is hard not to see, in addition to insurgency and prose poetry, the presence of such prominent figures as translators Bashir El-Siba'i and Ahmad Hassan or painters Adel El-Siwi and Mohammad Abla. Asked about the reissue this week, Qeshta -- himself a poet, now approaching his 50s -- says, "The goal of the magazine still stands: the idea of reinforcing and contributing to the formation of new trends in the various creative fields. Thus its wager on the independence of creativity remains a principal need against a backdrop of social conditions characterised, first and foremost, by deterioration and collapse, which had a negative effect on culture and intellectuals." Qeshta proudly points out that, for numerous intellectuals, once Al-Kitabah Al-Ukhra was discontinued, it could not be replaced. Spawning a new generation of independent journals, each with a specific focus, Al-Kitabah Al-Ukhra, he feels, could now provide the "new elements that have emerged in recent times" with a free space in which to be expressed. "We are also eager to pose our specific questions and offer a statement on the new reality, in which culture is fast turning into a celebratory gesture that does not support talent." This finds support in the new issue being an editorial collaboration. Edited by Mekkawi Said, Yasser Abdel-Latif, Hassan Khedr, Ali Mansour and Hamdi El-Gazzar as well as Qeshta, the volume includes a series of articles on the crisis of culture by Bashir El-Saba'i in which he analyses the predominant "retrograde modernism" and its connection with religious discourse and the consequent racism and violence. Other pieces include the historian Sherif Younis on chaos and Hosni Abdel-Rehim on poetry and politics. In addition, there are literary texts -- poems, stories, and genre-transcending pieces -- by some 30 writers belonging to different generations. These include, among many others, Ibrahim Dawoud, Alaa Khaled and Iman Mersal. But why did Al-Kitabah Al-Ukhra stop in the first place? Qeshta cites funding issues, further complicated over a period of 12 years by the fact that "foreign funding" was an issue that could throw the credibility of the magazine into question. He adds that the magazine had achieved a good portion of its aim relative to the period in which it came out and the context of that period; there was some degree of concern over the possibility of repetitiveness. Qeshta is enthusiastic about the accomplishments of the magazine in its first edition: "The magazine contributed to establishing the presence of the new writing and of prose poets, who had been completely marginalised. It also celebrated the marginalised and the rebellious who had creative cultural projects: the Egyptian surrealist poet Georges Henein, for example, and his supporters in the Art and Freedom group." Qeshta arrived in Cairo 20 years to publish his only collection of poems, Sirr Al-Qarawi (The Provincial's Secret) -- and he encountered the "poetic militias" of the 1970s, which were full of what he calls missionary ideas. "Perhaps we were more fortunate, since we did not stick by a fixed formula or express and closed group. The magazine was an open space, unlike the publications of the 1970s poets." This is as evident as ever in the new issue, which includes folios from the well-known cartoonist Gamal El-Leithi, Mohammad Abla (on his trip to India) and the Lebanese poet Onsi El-Hajj. This, besides the literary texts, establishes the credentials of the new edition and promises a role as intense and engaging as that of the first.
