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.”
Poetry
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.”
‘A Poem from the World of Cats’ by Muthaffar al-Nawab
“A dark wind bellowed out destruction / as a sweet street kitty awaited nightfall”
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. “
Remembering 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.”