A rare model of sustained regional cultural partnership

Cross-border cultural collaboration

The tenth Luxor Festival of Arabic Poetry convened this week, marking both the anniversary of the House of Poetry’s 2015 founding and a rare model of sustained regional cultural partnership.

Organised by the UAE’s Sharjah Department of Culture and Egypt’s Ministry of Culture, the four-day programme has grown from a bilateral initiative into a significant node in Arab literary life.

Publishing professionals should note the festival’s scale: 140 poets, critics, and artists participated in the 2025 edition, held 27–30 November at the Luxor Conference Centre Theatre. Under the patronage of H.H. Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, the event demonstrates how institutional commitment can anchor literary infrastructure far beyond capital cities.

Youth development pipeline

The opening evening showcased four poets under twenty-five, illustrating the House’s deliberate talent pipeline. Rawda Shaheen’s debut collection A Citron Stuck in My Mouth was published through the festival’s own competition – evidence of a direct route from performance to print.

Publishing houses seeking emerging voices should monitor this programme closely: the House has supported 3,000 poets across 600 events over the past decade.

Decade in numbers

The statistics reveal an ambitious cultural apparatus:

250+ critical seminars involving 480 critics

25 training courses

20 exhibitions of calligraphy and visual arts

50+ books published

Outreach extending from Arish to Salloum, Matrouh to the Egyptian-Libyan border

For publishers, these figures indicate both a developed distribution network and an engaged readership in historically underserved governorates.

Cultural personality and literary infrastructure

Dr Mohamed Abu El-Fadl Badran was honoured as Cultural Personality of the Year, while a dedicated exhibition displayed periodicals from Sharjah’s publishing stable.

The initiative’s success challenges the conventional Cairo-centric publishing model, proving that literary vitality can be decentralised when supported by consistent funding and institutional will.

Strategic implications

The Sharjah-Egypt partnership offers a template for cultural diplomacy that yields tangible creative output. For an industry grappling with questions of accessibility and regional representation, the Luxor model – sustained investment, youth focus, and geographic reach – provides a blueprint for scalable literary development.

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This post first appeared in the TNPS LinkedIn newsfeed.