Awad Ahmoudi, Oud Virtuoso
“In the last century, the oud has greatly contributed to the reformulation of the relationship between poetry and music.”
Poetry
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.”
Finding a Voice in English for ‘My Heart Became a Bomb’
“Too frequently, I think, translators give in to the idea that a foreign text needs to retain a lot of that foreignness—this is Venuti’s foreignizing versus domesticating debate.”