THE London Magazine, which can trace its roots back to 1732, has a reputation as a publication that has featured many of the greatest names in English literature as well as encouraging new writers and breaking boundaries. Now, with the publication of an “Anglo-Arab” issue, it has brought to its readers the work of Arab writers and artists. The cover illustration of the issue is Gaza-born Palestinian artist Laila Shawa's watercolor “Mirage”, a colorful array of geometric patterns. The freshness and vibrancy of the cover continues into the content of the magazine, which is a lively mix of poetry, stories, essays and reviews by Arabs and non-Arabs. Some of the Arabs featured in the issue are long-established names such as the late Iraqi poet Sargon Boulus and his compatriot Adnan Al-Sayegh, Jordanian poet Amjad Nasser, Palestinian novelist and short story writer Mahmoud Shukair, and Moroccan writer Leila Abouzeid. The distinguished Palestinian critic Fakhri Saleh, the author of many books on Arabic literature, has contributed a feature entitled “The Arabic Novel at the Beginning of the 21st Century: the Thematic Thread of History.” The Lebanese poet and journalist Joumana Haddad is particularly known for her sensual poetry of the body. In the poem “Cadaver”, translated by Marilyn Hacker, a woman gazes at her own corpse. The Jordanian Fathieh Saudi, two of whose poems appear in the issue, has established herself as a poet and reviewer since her arrival in London. Her work has a questing, spiritual character. In the poem “Searching for a Language”, she writes: “Languageless I became / My paralyzed feelings go on hurting me!” From the younger generation of writers, 23-year-old French-Algerian Faiza Guenes is the author of two bestselling novels articulating the experiences of Arab and African youth in the combustible suburbs of Paris. The extract from the English translation of her second novel, “Dreams from the Endz”, published in the London Magazine shows her innovative use of language. In an accompanying feature, the novel's translator Sarah Ardizzone describes the challenges in translating the novel's “backslang” or “verlan” in which words are spliced and reversed. Ardizzone enlisted the help of “slangsta” Cleo Soazandry, from LIVE! Magazine of Brixton, London. Soazandry is bilingual in Paris and London urban slangs. Ardizzone notes that in Guenes' writing, “Maghrebi dialogue jostles with Mexican soap-operas, French rap and the couture of Agnes B.” The pieces by Arab writers are often marked by the legacy of exile, oppression, war, instability and survival. Adnan Al-Sayegh's poem “Passage to Exile” begins: “The moaning of the train kindles the sorrow of the tunnels / Roaring along the rails of everlasting memories / While I am nailed to the window / With one half of my heart... Amjad Nasser's story “An Ordinary Conversation about Cancer” is dedicated to the Saudi photographer and journalist Salih Al-Azzaz who died of a brain tumor in 2002. Nasser, who is managing editor and cultural editor of the London-based Arabic daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, writes: “I predict that I will die in London on a rainy day. (A rainy day in London, what a far-fetched prophecy!) And I decree at this very moment that I will be buried in Mafraq next to my mother who was convinced that no space will ever contain us both. Of course, she may be right, since as everyone knows, she is going to heaven.” In his second story, “Neighbors”, Nasser tells of “the only Englishwoman in our neighborhood” of London. Writer and academic Barbara Bridger gives an appreciative review to exiled Syrian writer Zakaria Tamer's story collection “Breaking Knees”, translated by Ibrahim Muhawi and published by Garnet Publishing. Tamer “uses satire to critique religious hypocrisy and sexual repression. His tough message is underscored by a style which is consistently direct, economical and unsentimental.” Anglo-Irish-Indian poet John Siddiqui's touching poem “Unintended Loyalty” is set on a night in nineteen sixty-nine when his mother and father are asleep. “They have put their holy war / on to their nightstands, Islam on one table, / Catholicism across the room on the other.” Tim Cummings' Egypt-inspired poems “Giza” and the sonnet “Mango” from “Cairo Sonnets” are evidence of the impact the country has made on him. James Wilkes' “From ‘4096 Poems'” has an effective structure of shuffled repeated lines and images. Novelist and editor Jenny Newman reviews the poetry collection “At Damascus Gate on Good Friday” by British poet Agnes Meadows, whose poetry draws on the time she has spent living in the West Bank and Gaza. Newman gives the “fine, impassioned” collection a generally positive verdict, writing of Meadows' “warmly reciprocal world.” The issue pays attention not only to literature but also to the Arab visual arts. There are reproductions of works by Laila Shawa, Tunisian Nja Mahdaoui, and Iraqis Maysaloun Faraj and Satta Hashem. Two members of the London Magazine's staff have contributed probing essays on aspects of art. Sub-editor Nicki Seth-Smith writes with verve of her encounters with four Arab women artists in London: Shawa, Faraj, Yara El-Sherbini and Jananne Al-Ani. “If we are to fulfil Maysaloun Faraj's dream of a world at peace, or approach Laila Shawa and Yara El-Sherbini's vision of a public that questions and self-criticises, we would do well to pay attention to the creative minds speaking out from a part of the world that is so routinely and grotesquely misrepresented by the West,” comments Seth-Smith. The magazine's editorial assistant Oliver J Dimsdale discusses Tate Britain's exhibition of British Orientalist art, The Lure of the East, with the exhibition's curator Nicholas Tromans and scholar and writer Robert Irwin who is strongly critical of the late Palestinian professor Edward Said's book “Orientalism”. The London Magazine has been through several major upheavals in its 276-year history. It closed down in 2001 after the death of Alan Ross, its editor for 40 years, but it was bought and relaunched by Christopher Arkell with the poet Sebastian Barker as editor. Barker resigned last year in protest at the cutting off by Arts Council England of the £30,000-a-year grant on which the magazine was heavily dependent. The Arts Council is financed by the government and the National Lottery. It pulled the plug on its funding as part of swingeing government cuts to the arts in order to divert funding to the ever-soaring cost of the 2012 London Olympics. There was consternation in the arts world at the prospect of the London Magazine's possible demise. Prominent personalities including Harold Pinter, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Melvyn Bragg and poet laureate Andrew Motion signed a letter published in the Times Literary Supplement deploring the cut in funding to the magazine, but to no avail. Christopher Arkell is seeking a new editor to replace Sebastian Barker. In the meantime, Sara-Mae Tuson has been the acting editor, assisted by her enthusiastic team. The high quality of the Anglo-Arab issue is testimony to the flair they are bringing to their task, and one can only hope that the magazine will before long find a way of putting its finances on a more secure footing. __
