In their October issue, Poetry magazine announced winners of eight annual prizes for the best work published in the magazine over the past 12 months. Among the eight honored for their poetry, translations, and prose was Arabic translator Kareem James Abu-Zeid, for his translations of Dunya Mikhail and Najwan Darwish:
Some of the magazine’s awards date back a century, while others are of more recent invention. “Garlanding poets, critics and translators, the list of prizewinners has grown strikingly more impressive and more diverse over time,” magazien editor Don Share says in the press release, “like contemporary poetry itself.”
This year’s “John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize for Translation,” which was established in 1999, was awarded to Kareem James Abu-Zeid for his translations of Dunya Mikhail’s poem “Tablets” in the magazine’s March 2014 issue and of Najwan Darwish’s poems “Mary,” “Want Ad” and “A Moment of Silence” in the April 2014 issue.
The award is for $500.
The prizes are organized and administered by the Poetry Foundation in Chicago, publisher of Poetry magazine. Past winners of the translation prize include Peter Cole (2012), for his translation portfolio “The Poetry of the Kabbalah,” and Marilyn Hacker (2001).
