Remembering Iraqi Poet Sargon Boulus

Poet, novelist, and translator Sinan Antoon had a tribute to Iraqi poet Sargon Boulus on Jadaliyya yesterday, the fourth anniversary of Boulus’s death.

Antoon (see comment below) is currently at work translating selected works by Boulus, to be published in 2013. I would love to see a collection that traced Boulus’s work and shifts throughout his life: The biography of the poet in his poems.

In the meantime, you can read through Boulus’s Knife Sharpener, published by Banipal Books, and a few Boulus works I have culled from the Internet. These should be organized thematically or chronologically, but they’re not. More recent poems—from his 2008 collection—tend to be near the top.  By way of introduction, you can read Antoon’s tribute and Boulus’s essay from Banipal 1, in which “Sargon Boulus talks about his life in poetry.” Or if you’re the sort who skips introductions:

The Child of War, trans. Antoon

A Portrait of an Iraqi Person at the End of Time, trans. Antoon

To Imru’ al-Qays on his Way to the Inferno, trans. Suneela Mubayi (with commentary)

To the Master of the Banquet, trans. Antoon

The Meaning of My Prayer,  trans. Antoon

Two Poems: Railroad and A Pouch of Dirt, trans. Antoon

The Corpse, trans. Antoon

Siege, trans. Sargon Boulus and Alistair Elliot

Tea with Mouayed al-Rawi in a Turkish café in Berlin, The Letter Arrived, The Refugee Tells, and more, trans. Youssef Rakha.

A Butterfly’s Dream, trans. Kees Nijland (Arabic side-by-side)

A Man Fell On His Knees, trans. Kees Nijland (Arabic side-by-side)

A Refugee Talking, trans. Kees Nijland (Arabic side-by-side)

An Elegy for Sindbad Cinema, trans. Kees Nijland (Arabic side-by-side)

How Eastern Singing Was Born, trans. Kees Nijland (Arabic side-by-side)

I Came from There, trans. Kees Nijland (Arabic side-by-side)

Tu Fu in Exile, trans. Kees Nijland (Arabic side-by-side)

Four Poems: The Siege, The Borders, The Letter Arrived, and Incident in a Mountain Village, trans. Sargon Boulus

Four Poems: The Ziggurat Builders and O Player in the Shadows, The Legend of al-Sayyab and the Silt and A Key to the House, trans. Boulus