Iman Mersal’s poetry collection “A Dark Alley Suitable for Learning to Dance” (1995) was one of the very few anthologies that marked a major shift in the status of contemporary Arabic poetry.

Her work, along with others, revealed a different perception of poetry and the poet, of the nature of the first and the role of the latter, of what poetry is capable of and what could be expected of the poet. How did this transition begin? What drove an entire generation of poets to step out of their safe haven of comfort zones to venture risking out in an unexplored unknown territory?

Join us next Monday at Townhouse Rawabet for a conversation, in Arabic, with poet Iman Mersal, moderated by writer and translator Ahmed Shafie. Open to all

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Townhouse Salon is a monthly series of friendly conversations served over coffee in the Library. Each Salon is led by a moderator – a writer, an artist, an academic – who is invited to curate a topic and share relevant texts with the public, to be deliberated upon in our gatherings