The poetics of hope and frustration: young Egyptian poets interrogating the nation

Abstract

Never has the timeless distrust of different generations been more manifest than these days where we see the Egyptian young revolutionaries who emerged in the wake of 2011 being marginalized and even silenced. The last few years in Egypt have witnessed numerous attempts to analyze and interrogate contemporary discourses within different forms of popular culture situating them as fundamental means of examining power and agency. Such contemporary discourses of power, hegemony, revolution, opposition besides concepts of nationalism and resistance in the wake of 2011 revolution and its aftermath, have been the subject of a number of studies on the literary output of the revolution, and notably in the field of poetry and songs. Most of these studies viewed the colloquial poetry produced by young Egyptian poets within the continuum of this rich poetic tradition.

I argue that recent poems by young Egyptian poets represent a rupture rather than a continuity within this same tradition. The selected poetic voices are distinguished from both the Egyptian long established tradition of vernacular poetry but also from the poetry composed and sung in the early days of the revolution. This new generation of poets sing the pain and frustration of a dream that did not come true. As they interrogate the meaning of nationalism and the nation itself, one of the main themes in Egyptian vernacular lyrical and poetic tradition, a new corpus is emerging out of their poetry of resistance almost claiming a history of its own.

Keywords:

• 25 January 2011
• colloquial poetry
• nation and nationalism
• witness poetry

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Notes on contributors

Faten I. Morsy

Faten I. Morsy is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the Department of English, Ain Shams University. She has taught a wide range of courses in English and Comparative Literature in Cairo, Casablanca and Manama, Bahrain and has been on the advisory board of several literary journals. She has published extensively on postcolonial literatures, gender and cross-cultural studies, travel literature and modern Arabic literature. She has edited The Knotted Handkerchief: Studies in the Critical and Creative works of Radwa Ashour and is currently working on a volume on New Tendencies in Comparative Literature.