This essay presents a synoptic view and a critical synthesis of the activity of the Literary Forum at the University of Aleppo (1980–1986) with the aim of putting Aleppo on the map of modern Arabic literature. Serving as an intensive laboratory for literary and meta-literary production under political duress, the Forum is situated at a con- fluence of global cultural currents as well as at a turning point in the history of the Arabic prose poem. The Forum members devised literary strategies for coping with the deterioration of their city’s cultures while working within both an Arabic tradition of modernity and a global space of intellectual engagement. Well into the twenty-first century, the Forum’s legacies continue to shape the moral stances of poets facing disas- ter at home and the precariousness of statelessness abroad, and extend into forms of civilian solidarity and collective organizing.

This article argues that when poetic practice in Syria turned to a register of modernity, many of its idioms darkened to a poetics of trauma and catastrophe. By highlighting a Syrian manifesto for the poetics of catastrophe and taking two poets who stylistically stand at polar opposites, I aim to show the diversity of forms in which Syrian witness poetry came into being and set it in a larger framework of efforts to anthologise and globalise twentieth century poetry from sites of violent political conflict. In doing so, I also trace the literary historical trajectories that informed its making in Syria and continued to steer its course well after 2011. Aside from original poetry, the ecosystem of the culture of catastrophe includes critical discourse, novels, cinema, media products, and literary translation. I will address some, not all, of the elements in this repertoire as they relate to poetic production.