"Mediterranean Stories", conversation between Anne-Lise Broyer, Mohammed Bennis and Stéphanie Gaou

"If my language on earth is dying, it means that it remains the only legacy that questions my future. The enthusiasm that guided our steps in the 1970s in the direction of choosing between the West and the East has lost its vigor. Being Moroccan and writing in Arabic in no way separates me from other poets. Poetry stands alone, because it never ceases to attract the embers of languages. This is what the current condition of poetry teaches us. On Moroccan soil, it's not only poetry that is cut off from its vital environment, but also the Arabic-speaking poet; he remains an eternal stranger; there is no mark on his path of hospitality, no right to speak, for failing to love my language madly, and with which I never stop writing the song of funerals" extract from a text by Mohamed Bennis, translated by Maati Kabbal (Le Magazine littéraire, April 1999)."

Anne-Lise Broyer

For over 20 years, Anne-Lise Broyer has pursued a singular body of photographic work that can be summed up as an experience of literature through the eye, intimately intertwining reading and the emergence of an image, writing and photography, as evidenced by the numerous editions she has shared with Pierre Michon, Bernard Noël, Colette Fellous, Yannick Haenel, Jean-Luc Nancy.... She also questions the areas of friction and intersection between silver photography and graphite drawings directly on the print, in order to achieve a zone of disturbance in perception. Anne-Lise Broyer thus creates visual situations that continually refer back to the photographic image and its technical history.

Mohammed Benni

Mohammed Bennis, born in 1948 in Fez, is a Moroccan poet, publisher and academic. He has published numerous collections in Arabic and several works translated into French, including "Le Don du vide" and "Funérailles entre deux fleuves". Co-founder of Editions Toubkal in 1985, Bennis teaches at Rabat University. A leading figure of modern poetry in Morocco, he draws his inspiration from Arab culture and French poetry.

Stéphanie Gaou

Stéphanie Gaou, born in Cannes, has lived in Tangier since 2004, the land she chose to write, open a bookshop & melt into her second nature. She regularly organizes large-scale cultural events in the city of Detroit. She has published poems and short stories with L'Harmattan & géhess, and a long narrative-poem with Al Manar, Capiteuses, in 2012 and Staccato in 2016 with the same publisher. She is a regular contributor to short films and artists' books.