‘Adonis at 90’: A Digital, Poetic, Global Celebration
Last year, 2020, marked the year of Adonis’s ninetieth, and on December 31, 2020 — at the very end of his 90th year — celebratory videos were uploaded to the website adonis90.org.
Poetry
Awad Ahmoudi, Oud Virtuoso
“In the last century, the oud has greatly contributed to the reformulation of the relationship between poetry and music.”
Christmas-day Gift: 8 Poets Translated by Yasmine Seale, Online
It is the ArabLit tradition to share a curated list of poems on Christmas Day.
Abdallah Zrika’s ‘Funeral of the Snow Grenade’
“A dead language in the throat of a dead poet. Assassins only wait for the day of the feast. Cemeteries are only full of white beds.”
Introducing ‘The Mu`allaqat for Millennials’
“Aiming to make the mu`allaqat known to new readers, the project gathers a team of eight commentators and translators.”
Friday Finds: 5 New Translations of Iman Mersal
“Marrying a piano player /
is different from marrying a sailor.”
New in Translation: Ahmed Abdul Hussein’s ‘Al-Andalus Square’
“I am a candlestick that argues about the power of darkness inside you, / in your many holes.”
Jabra Ibrahim Jabra: ‘Soliloquy of a Modern Faust’
“The wave of days rises / and recedes, bidding farewell to / shells of love and hate / upon the body / resounding with the echoes of words.”
Friday Finds: Ghayath Almadhoun’s ZEBRA-winning Filmpoem, ‘Évian’
“Like a visual representation of the unconscious it is a big unknowable that flows without a break, wave after wave, thought after thought, bearing the words of the poem.”