From ‘Your Name, Palestine’ by Olivia Elias
"Eyes fixed on the Mediterranean / mirage shimmering from afar / we sail from island to island / between walls and barbed wire"
View ArticleFriday Finds: Two Poems by Ameer Hamad
"These two poems translated by Katharine Halls are small enough to carry in one’s palm; they utilise a mode of poetic witness attuned to distillation, frankness, and the startling force of an ending."
View ArticleFriday Finds: A Discussion of Ra’ad Abdulqadir’s ‘Except for This Unseen...
On May 27, Kareem joined poet and novelist Sinan Antoon -- who has called Abdulqadir "a poet's poet" -- to discuss Except for This Unseen Thread.
View ArticleFriday Finds: Must-watch Special Episode of ‘Maqsouda’ on Palestinian Poetry
"Poets Zeina Hashem Beck and Farah Chamma, co-hosts of the podcast Maqsouda, share a one-time video special filmed by Hind Shoufani."
View ArticleIraqi Poet Saadi Youssef (1934-2021) Dies in London
"In the early morning hours of June 12, the great Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef died at his home in the village of Harefield, outside London."
View ArticleSunday Submissions: Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry in Translation
The annual Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry in Translation is open for entries until July 16.
View ArticleRemembering Bahraini Poet Ghazi Al-Haddad (1961-2021)
"If my tongue was cut, / let it grow back and call out ‘Jamri’"
View ArticlePoetry by Ra’ad Abdulqadir: ‘The Song of the Eternal Citizen’
"Angels don't cook / Poetry is inedible / What will we eat today? Legends?"
View ArticleNew Poetry by Ahlam Bsharat: ‘I Saw a Dead Road on the Road’
"I saw a dead road on the road / & left it there"
View ArticleOn Why Women’s Poetry in Arabic is Where It’s At
"For me, actually, I think we are impacted by male writers who are writing now, and they are writing about broken masculinity, which I don't like either. So maybe women are free of this, relatively....
View ArticleRawan Maki’s ‘Waves of the Future’ / ‘أمواج المستقبل’
We “reclaim” land from water, taking back what was never given / We worship our own footsteps, replacing the water’s sheen
View Article‘If I Were a Cat’: Rasha Omran’s Poetry in Three Languages
"If I were a cat / I would was my skin with my tongue / like this / your scent passing from my skin to my mouth, so I'd think I'd devoured you"
View ArticleNew Poetry: Samar Abdel Jaber’s ‘Four Years Without You’
"Perhaps you think poetry / is a waste of time, for eternity can't be rendered in languages / and death after death / has a different name."
View ArticlePoetry in Translation: Nada Elshabrawy’s ‘In a Bad Movie’
We walk the streets shoulder to shoulder / bumping into plastic mannequins / they break / but we shatter
View Article#WiTMonth Podcasts: Poetry and More with Iman Mersal
Meanwhile, in an August episode of the new podcast MAQSOUDA, co-hosted by Farah Chamma and Zeina Hashem Beck, the host-poets discuss Mersal's «فكرة البيوت», or "The Idea of Houses."
View ArticleNew Poetry: Rym Jalil’s ‘My Mother’s Kitchen’
"Every day I lie and say / I know this place. / My mother's kitchen / brims with afflictions / I must pretend to befriend it / we all know it can have only one master / from its beginning to its end"
View ArticleTwo Laughter Poems & a Cover Reveal from Maya Abu al-Hayyat’s ‘You Can Be the...
"You will hear and taste her laughter and also yours. Because laughter is 'the excess knowledge no one takes seriously,' the cherished identity smuggled out of psychology and surveilled consciousness."
View Article10 Poems for ‘Medieval Femme,’ Inspired by al-Khansa
"Like music from the courts of the Abbasid Caliphate after a decadent cybernetic makeover."
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‘She Stretched Out Her Hand’: A Translator’s Tribute to Mourid Barghouti
By Shaimaa Abulebda My first memory of reading a poem by Mourid Barghouti (1944-2021) goes back to the tenth grade. I was reading “غمزة” (“A Wink”) from his “قصائد مختارة” (Selected Poems), and I was...
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