New Poetry from Ghassan Al-Jibai: ‘You Call It a Grave, I Call It a Flowerpot’
“I am as you’ve always known me / Arms crossed over my chest / Like a stone bridge”
Poetry
‘Arresting a Poem’ and Two More by Mona Kareem, tr. Sara Elkamel
Above a Floor of Lament * As he tried to finish painting her eyes The painting drowned in tears * All the carpets of kings are red And so are their costumes * […]
New Poetry in Translation: ‘Love’ by Ahmed Yamani
“Love / was the axe that strikes // Love / was the hand holding the axe”
A Poem from ALQ: Fowziyah Abu Khalid’s ‘Wedding’
“I’ve been dreaming of a wedding since the splash of / the first wet ink”
New Poetry: Four by Aya Nabih, tr. Sara Elkamel
“I have discarded days in the wastebasket to make room for barrenness, and I seriously considered setting them on fire, to do my part in making the world a lighter place.”
Three Translations of Asmaa Azaizeh’s ‘Dragonflies’
These three translations of Asmaa Azaizeh’s “Dragonflies” appeared in the first issue of ArabLit Quarterly, which came out in the fall of 2018.
New Poetry: Three Poems by Rana al-Tonsi
“Is there a way to contact heaven?
I wage wars against myself
And I always lose”
#WiTMonth Cover Reveal: Iman Mersal’s ‘The Threshold’
The collection is coming mid-October and can be pre-ordered on the MacMillan website.
Translating Al-Khansa: ‘Between the Scylla of Shrillness and Melodrama, and the Charybdis of Monotony and Cliché’
” 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.”