"I am the star up there that lurks shy and restless in the sky,/ silently chewing on his pale light."
Etel Adnan’s ‘Time’ Wins Best Translated Book Award
"What’s not to savor in Etal Adnan’s philosophical and precise, yet intensely moving Time, thoughtfully and beautifully translated by Sarah Riggs?"
‘Their Beauty is Absolute’
"’Tis God’s good vines / our world entwines / o’erlapping sunned & / ashen lines / [yet all be wines.]"
Lock-in Literature: ‘A Primitive Prayer for Uruk’
"Give her back her earrings, God / Return to her clay oven the fire / And the rain to her farms / And take away death which harvests her children."
Etel Adnan and Sarah Riggs Win Griffin Poetry Prize for ‘Time’
"What is astonishing here is how she manages to give weariness its own relentless energy."
Arabic Translation Challenge #2: ‘Do Not Scold Me!’
"Cure me rather with the cause of my ill…"
‘Every Father Kills his Son’
"A life of pain / For that, dad, thanks! /No son had I / To say, Life stanks!" - Results from our first challenge.
Weekly Arabic Translation Challenge: The Crime of al-Ma’arri’s Father
هذا جَنَاهُ أبي عليَّ وَمَا جَنَيتُ عَلَى أَحَدِ
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;"
Sunday Submissions: Words Without Borders 2020 ‘Poems in Translation’ Contest
"Winning poets and translators will be awarded $150 each."
Etel Adnan’s ‘Time’ Makes Griffin Poetry Prize Shortlist
Four books made the 2020 international shortlist, but just one translation: Etel Adnan's "Time," translated from the French by Sarah Riggs.
‘A Street in the Pandemic’ & Other Poems by Jawdat Fakhreddine
"Perhaps, after this pandemic passes,/ I will keep the rituals I have acquired in its course / because I've learned to hold on- more than ever before -/ to time,/ to examine it meticulously/ and to find life, clenched and caught,/ in its fleeting moments."
