In December 2014, the first session of the Egyptian Prose Poem Conference was launched under the slogan "In creativity, there is a room for everyone." The conference issued the first part of the anthology of Egyptian prose poetry, titled “Springs to Make a River”, which includes poems by the poets who participated in the inaugural session.

The conference, hosted by the Cairo Atelier for Artists and Writers, came about through the efforts of the poets themselves and a form of financial participation in response to a call by the Egyptian poet Adel Galal. It featured 25 poets from all over Egypt, across 6 poetry evenings and 3 research sessions.

The 2014 conference was not the first of its kind for Egyptian prose poetry; others had preceded it at the Journalists' Syndicate and the Supreme Council of Culture. However, those did not go beyond a single session and subsequently came to a halt.

Yet “Springs to Make a River” managed to continue, thanks to the persistence of its founder and its organizing committee—which includes Omar Shahryar, Ibrahim Gamal El-Din El-Touni, Hanaa Nussair, and others—reaching its ninth session last September.

Starting from its second session, the conference began offering special spotlights on prose poetry experiences in Arab countries, alongside its core mission of presenting Egyptian prose poets. In its subsequent sessions, it hosted poets from Morocco, Libya, and elsewhere. The conference management also organized diverse poetry programs in various Egyptian cities and governorates, including Suez, Beheira (Damanhur), and Beni Suef, with active and impactful participation from the poets and creatives of those cities and governorates.

Through his participation in the first session, poet and translator Osama Gad pointed out the scarcity of Arab studies in the field of establishing prose poetry as an art form, especially applied studies. He said: "Most studies dealing with this poetic genre rely on Susan Bernard's famous book “The Prose Poem from Baudelaire to the Modern Era”—a study that attempts to establish this art form in general, but does so by tracing its impact and deducing its defining features in light of the prose texts themselves. However, many of our critics have treated the matter as if Bernard had provided a 'recipe' for writing the prose poem."

Gad called for the importance of having studies concerned with revising the critical constants regarding this genre on one hand, and tracing its early signs on the other—whether at the level of the concept of poetry or the concept of the prosaic nature of poetry. He also noted that the scholars of Taha Hussein overlook an important matter: that the "Dean of Arabic Literature" encountered the Paris Commune and frequented the gatherings of the Latin Quarter among French intellectuals and creatives, where this poetic genre had a loud presence in their circles. It is unimaginable that this did not find an echo in Taha Hussein's texts and studies, particularly “Wednesday conversations” or “Paradise of Thorn”.

Despite the absence of official patronage and financial support for the conference, the Egyptian Ministry of Culture provided forms of logistical support, including printing the poets' anthology for more than one session at the Egyptian General Book Authority, and hosting more than one session in important cultural and archaeological sites, including the historic Al-Sennari House, the General Egyptian Library in Damanhur, and others. However, this support remains limited on the one hand, and intermittent on the other, and does not reach the level of a strategic framework or a joint protocol between the organizers and official cultural bodies. This reinforces the reality that the prose poem is still a literary genre that does not enjoy full recognition from the cultural establishment, which still regards this hybrid art form—combining two opposites (poetry versus prose) in its central structure—with suspicion.

Nevertheless, the enthusiasm of the prose poets themselves and the insistence of the conference's organizing committee, foremost among them Adel Galal, have managed to give the conference an influential and effective presence, making it one of the most prominent annual non-institutional cultural events in Cairo. Preparations are underway for the tenth session of the conference this year, alongside establishing an important anthological database for Egyptian and Arab prose poets—especially the younger poetic generations—representing a tremendous diversity in creative experiences, imaginations, and concepts. This enriches the poetic reality with highly diverse, distinctive, and varied experiences, reaffirming the conference's core slogan: "In creativity, there is space for everyone."

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Osama Gad is a poet, translator and editor from Cairo.