Friday Finds: ‘Ode to Lebanon’

Nashwa Gowanlock profiles Bulaq poet laureate Zeina Hashem Beck in “I sort of broke English’: Meet the Lebanese poet crossing boundaries“:

The article features a video of Hashem Beck introducing and reading “Ode to Lebanon” shot by Zahra Hankir. The video was taken on October 19, when Hashem Beck read at the Rugby Tavern in London as part of the London launch of the Laureate’s Choice Anthology, which includes Hashem Beck’s poems from There Was and How Much There Was.

Listen to her read the poem here:

Hashem Beck also appeared yesterday in the New York Times, with Ghazal: Back Home,” selected for the newspaper by Naomi Shihab Nye, who is the current Young People’s Poet Laureate of the Poetry Foundation, Chicago

More Hashem Beck:

I sort of broke English’: Meet the Lebanese poet crossing boundaries

Zeina Hashem Beck: ‘Careful Not To Use Others’ Suffering in a Poem’

Bulaq 23: ‘Poems That Cross Language and Time’