” It’s certainly my experience that the deeper one goes into the surface of a text, the stranger it becomes, and the more likely one is to find something fresh in translation.”
Read more‘A Poem from the World of Cats’ by Muthaffar al-Nawab
“A dark wind bellowed out destruction / as a sweet street kitty awaited nightfall”
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Remembering Muthaffar Al-Nawab: Poet, Nomad, and Warrior for Justice Who Fought from the Trenches of Poetry
“. But this fervor, depth, and audacity also made exile the only possibility for such a voice, as he became a particularly odd type of globetrotter, one who remained for half a century merely one step ahead of his pursuers. “
Read moreRemembering Salah Ahmed Ibrahim, an Avant Garde Pioneer of Sudanese Poetry
“Were they a bundle of arugula,
displayed for sale to the westerners in the big city,
they’d have been spared the scorching heat.
Instead, they’d have been carefully placed on a wet matt in the shade,
their lips kept wet with sprinkled water
their cheeks sparkling with freshness and moisture.”
New Poetry from Sudan: Mughira Harbya’s ‘Three Songs for the Ghajar’
“Only a ghajari knows the meaning of love.”
Read moreFrom the ‘Mirrors’ Issue: Hilal Badr’s ‘Ash-sha’b Yurid Isqat an-Nizam’
A shout awakens me; someone is yelling, “Ash-sha’b yurid isqat an-nizam [The People want to bring down the regime].” Does anyone believe this? I don’t.
Read moreA Poem for Land Day: Mahmoud Darwish’s ‘The Second Olive Tree’
“The olive tree does not weep and does not laugh.”
Read moreOn March 13, Poems for and after Mahmoud Darwish
“Perhaps you’re there now / You watch what’s happening from afar, / and with the silence of a god, / decide to do nothing.”
Read moreNew in Translation: Three Poems by Riyad al-Saleh al-Hussein
“I want to put a sea / in my prison cell / I want to steal all prison cells / and throw them in the sea”
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