New Arabic Poetry Translation Prize, Judged by Fady Joudah

“Split This Rock” poetry festival opens today in Washington, DC, shortly after Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here DC 2016 ended:

As part of the partnership between Split This Rock and Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here DC 2016, they’ve announced a new poetry translation contest: $500 for “the best English translation of an Arabic poem on the themes of social justice or freedom of expression.”

According to the prize website:

Winning poems will be published on Split This Rock’s website and within The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database. The contest will be judged by Fady Joudah, whose poetry and poetry translations (from the Arabic) have received the Yale Series of Younger Poets, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Griffin International poetry prize, a PEN USA award among others. Alight and Textu are his most recent collections. Textu is a sequence of short poems composed on cell phone where meter is character count. Guidelines for submission can be found here.

The deadline is May 1, 2016, and there is no reading fee. There were also be a second and third prize, both to be awarded $250.

Also: ArabLit editor M. Lynx Qualey will be speaking on Saturday morning as part of Split This Rock, along with poets LynleyShimat “Lynley” Lys, Nomi Stone, Philip Metres, at the Institute for Policy Studies. Other panelists and participants include Zeina Hashem Beck and Elmaz Abinader. More about the festival — which runs through the 17th — at splitthisrock.org.