Friday Finds: ‘I Sleep in My Inkwell and Wave to the Distant’
“of footfalls that never return / from the checkpoint / which only sends back bodies;”
Lit & Found
Friday Finds: An Excerpt of ‘The Butcher of Casablanca’
“He hummed a favorite tune as he went about his gruesome chore. When he was finished, he arranged the body parts in two garbage bags. Then he cleaned the floor, showered, and put on a change of clothes. He stretched out on the bed, lit a cigarette, and took a deep, delicious, triumphant puff.”
Selected: 10 Arabic Short Stories by Women, in Translation, Online
For #WITMonth, ten short stories by women, translated from Arabic to English, by writers from Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and Jordan.
On Mahmoud Darwish’s Birthday, 13 Poems
“It is not enough to love, for that is one of nature’s magical acts, like rainfall and thunder. It takes you out of yourself into the other’s orbit and then you have to fend for yourself. It is not enough to love, you have to know how to love. Do you know how?”
Newly Translated: Poems to Read for Ashraf Fayadh on January 14
On January 14, there will be readings held to stand shoulder to shoulder with Palestinian poet and artist Ashraf Fayadh held around the world.
A Holiday Gift: Ten Poems from Iman Mersal
Wrapped with care.
Imprisoned Poet Ashraf Fayadh’s ‘Frida Kahlo’s Mustache’
Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh has now gone more than a year without trial in Saudi prisons on the ostensible charge that he’s been “insulting the Godly self” through his poetry “and having long hair.”
6 of the Most Beautiful Writings from and for Gaza
Mahmoud Darwish once wrote, of Gaza, “We are unfair to her when we search for her poems.” We are certainly unfair when we scrabble anywhere for poems, searching for aesthetic pleasure in others’ suffering. But here, poetry seems to have welled up from the need to speak, to create, to defy silence.
Selected Works: On the 5th Anniversary of Mahmoud Darwish’s Death
Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish died on August 9, 2008: I particularly appreciate this 2002 interview Darwish gave to Raja Shehadeh: Raja Shehadeh: Do you build on the work of others? Mahmoud Darwish: Yes. […]