There can be no series on Iraqi poetry without an engagement with Sargon Boulos. It’s coming. In the meantime, poet-novelist-translator Sinan Antoon has published two newly translated Boulus poems in Jadaliyya:
There it is under your foot. Step on it if you wish. Step hard.
Then cross over. Fear not.
Among pebbles, it is no more than
a pebble.
Boulus’s collection Knife Sharpener was published by Banipal Books, and Antoon has been working on a new collection of Boulus’s work. Many of the translations below are by Antoon.
Until the new collection is ready:
Two translations of “The Refugee Tells,” trans. Youssef Rakha and Kees Nijland
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