Jack Clift is a doctoral researcher and translator affiliated with the Multilingual Locals, Significant Geographies (MULOSIGE) project.
Correspondence, Surveys and Literary News
In March 1953, Al-Motamid published a letter to its founder, Trina Mercader, by the renowned poet Fadwā Ṭūqān (Nablus 1917 – 2003). Ṭūqān’s letter is signed in her Palestinian birthplace in 1951, and her tone is very affectionate. The Palestinian poet explains that she has received Mercader’s letter through the poet Albert Adīb, a pioneer of the free verse and founder of the literary journal al-Adīb (1942).
In February 1954, Al-Motamid published a survey entitled “Has Andalusi literature influenced Moroccan literature?” The survey was published only in Arabic and answered by three prominent Moroccan scholars: Muhammad ‘Aziman, Muhammad Ibn Tawit and Muhammad al-Muntasir al-Kattani.
While some of the sections concerning both Spanish and Arabic literature were relatively thorough, Al-Motamid and Ketama also published scattered fragments, often taken from other journals. Under “Noticias” (“News”), it is reported that the Egyptian press announced, according to the Tetouani journal al-Ānis, the forthcoming publication of Historia del Corazón by Spanish Vicente Aleixandre, whom they called after “the prince of contemporary Spanish poetry.”