Friday Finds: Najwan Darwish, ‘An Afternoon in Albaicín’
This summer, Poetry Translation Centre will be publishing a new PEN Translates-winning collection by Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish, titled Embrace, translated by Paul Batchelor and Atef Alshaer:
While you wait, you can read a new poem by Darwish translated by his long-time collaborator Kareem James Abu-Zeid, who translated Darwish’s acclaimed 2014 collection, Nothing More to Lose.
The news of your death reached me
one sweltering afternoon
as I sat with friends on a peak of Albaicín.
They said, “your death.”
I said, “your life.”
You can read it all in Issue Five of New Poetry in Translation, where you can also read an excerpt from Quebecois-Algerian poet Ouanessa Younsi’s Bird-Borrowings, translated by Katelyn Cross.
It opens:
My parents peeled my skin like a fig. I was, each day, a different fruit.
Read:
Younsi’s From Bird Borrowings
Darwish’s “An Afternoon in Albaicín“
And 10 more by Darwish:
1. Want Ad
2. Mary
9. Rise Again
January 10, 2020 @ 7:37 am
The news of your death reached me one sweltering afternoon as I sat with friends on a peak of Albaicín. They said, “your death.” I said, “your life.”
excellent poem. It makes me remember.
James
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