In case you have missed it, the special Baffler magazine section on poetry from Palestine, curated by Fady Joudah, continues to unspool.
Lit & Found: Bouchaib Gadir’s ‘Small Dreams,’ ‘The Stranger,’ ‘Joy’
"The source of love opened / And a lily emerged."
Lit & Found: ‘And Yet My Heart’
Who swims the ocean is become as brine. Who climbs the mountain is transformed to air."
Preview: Translations, Quotes from Authors in ‘Arabic Literature in Berlin’ Discussion
The panel "Arabic Literature in Berlin" is the kickoff event for the 2021 BILA HUDOOD: Arabic Literature Everywhere digital festival, supported by the Royal Society for Literature. Get a preview of works by the participating authors, translators, and publishers.
‘The Last One’ by Fatima Daas Wins Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt Prize
" All of this is told in a precisely poetic and incredibly contemporary way, drawing on traditions of Arabic literatures with great naturalness and range (Qur’an, poetry, rap)."
Friday Finds: An Excerpt of Mohamed Kheir’s ‘Slipping’
"Where the corniche wall ran out, a great tree hooped over to drink from the river. Beyond the tree there was nothing: nothing between us and the water. "
Friday Finds: ‘Restoring a Dissolved Person’
"This lake is not water. It was a person I had talked to for a long time then he dissolved."
Friday Finds: Salah Badis’s ‘The Nayf’
The protagonists of Salah Badis' "The Nayf" meet in front of a broken ATM in an upper-class Algiers neighborhood.
Friday Finds: Five Poems by Qassim Haddad
The poems come from Haddad's first poetry collection, al-Bishara (The Omen), which appeared in 1970; he has since published more than a dozen more.
Friday Finds: ‘Music Is One of the Homes I Carry With Me Wherever I Go’
"I wrote the poems for the singers of the Arab world that you mention at a time where their music helped me grieve and dance. Their music is one of the homes I carry with me wherever I go."
Friday Finds: A New Translation of Amal Dunqul’s ‘The Book of Exodus’
"O you, standing on the verge of the massacre, / Brandish your weapons!"
Friday Finds: Dreams of Iman Mersal and Sargon Boulus
Two new dream poems have recently appeared in translation, online.