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Abstract Like many major literary movements, Modern Arabic poetry is an example of the process of intellectual and cultural cross-fertilization of geographically and ideologically diverse cultures through translation. When Yūsuf Al-Khāl decided to start publishing his magazine, Shi{u02BF}r, in 1957, he was aware that the Modern Arabic literary canon 2was rife with experimentation3 (Jayyusi, 1992, p. 142) and susceptible to more radical and innovative poetic experiments. Realizing that only through translation, can concepts, techniques and ideas of Western modernism be assimilated and introduced, he (and other members of Shi{u02BF}r like Adonis, Unsī Al-{u1E24}ājj, Khalidah Sa{u2019}īd, Mu{u1E25}ammad Al-Maghū{u1E6D}, Shawqī Abī Shaqrah, and many others) assumed a keen and ambitious translation project. Equating universal culture with Western culture, they invocated Western modernists as a 2tutelary spirit3 (Creswell, 2012, p. 156) and actually succeeded, through their translations, in importing a large corpus of modern Western poetic texts and traditions to the Arabic literary canon. Drawing on Even- Zohar{u2019}s Polysystem Theory and Pierre Bourdieu{u2019}s sociological framework, this study investigates the political, cultural and social elements that influenced the translation of Modern English poetry in Shi{u02BF}r magazine and the impact of these translations on the Arab literary canon during the fifties and sixties of the 20{u036D} {u036A} century |