Salah Rashid, Poet and writer
Moderator 
Salah Rashid, Poet and writer - Libya
THE LIBYAN WRITER BETWEEN THE LOCAL AND THE GLOBAL
Libyan literature, like a root deeply rooted in a soil burdened by transformations, resists the fragility of the moment and carries within its pages a constant desire to open up to the world. It is a literature shaped by suffering as much as it is nourished by dreams, advancing amidst storms, laden with the voices of writers who have made language their means of survival, and text an arena for the struggle between self and reality, between belonging and freedom.
In this ambiguous horizon between the interior and the exterior, the writer and poet Muhammad al-Qaddafi Masoud, a native of Gharyan, stands out as a voice that embodies the competence of the Libyan creative and his ability to make his local experience a mirror for all of humanity. He is not content with a single text and does not confine himself to a specific literary genre; he moves between poetry, prose, theater, essays, and dialogues, as if traversing the lands of the soul in search of a new meaning for writing. His language flows with its radiant simplicity, laden with symbols that illuminate everyday details and make them windows onto existence. Muhammad al-Qaddafi Masoud writes as if he is engaging in dialogue with life itself. He does not evade its questions, but rather confronts them with an eye open to freedom and disappointment, to dreams and defeat. From this constant contact with reality is born the depth of his writing, and his radiant humanity emerges, making every poem or text a contemplative experience of existence and beauty.
Despite the institutional fragility and limited platforms that surround the Libyan cultural scene, Masoud continues to persevere and accumulate, relying on individual freedom as a value and a spiritual outlet, refusing to let his voice be confined by geography or cultural bureaucracy. He attends Arab and international forums and platforms, and in poetry journals that receive his texts as if they were a new sap in the body of Arabic poetry. His presence confirms that when the Libyan writer believes in his text and himself, he can reach the world.
In the depths of his experience, the writer Muhammad al-Qaddafi Masoud does not represent an individual so much as he embodies a transformation in the image of the modern Libyan writer. A writer who combines the authenticity of his affiliation with the boldness of modernization, a language that springs from the earth and an imagination that opens it to the universe. He is a model of a writer who does not merely write poetry, but inscribes his entire existence in it, achieving a rare balance between his localism, which gives him roots, and his humanity, which grants him wings. Thus, his presence in the Arab and international arena becomes proof that literary competence is not measured by awards or occasions, but rather by the continuous act of experimentation and renewal, and by the ability to transform a text into an identity and a voice that continues to resonate in cultural spaces. He bears witness that the Libyan writer, when he writes with sincerity and perseverance, can be a facet of a broad, humane literature.
