ABSTRACT
Luwīs ʿAwaḍ (Lewis Awad, 1915–1990) published a bombshell poetic manifesto in 1947 called Blūtūlānd (Plutoland) that begins by challenging readers to “Break poetry’s back!” Awad lays out a revolutionary plan to refigure Arabic poetry, drawing on both European poetic developments and the history of Arabic literary criticism. Despite the revolutionary innovations Awad suggests in Plutoland, his contributions to modernist poetry in Arabic have found little recognition in the subsequent critical tradition. This study reinvestigates Plutoland through an analysis of Awad’s introduction, the poems in the collection, and other critical writing about the project.
