"And here I am, aimlessly wandering the streets / As the night weighs long and dark upon the land and I."
Barjeel Prize-winning Poems Now on ‘Rusted Radishes’
"The winners and runners-up of the inaugural Barjeel Poetry Prize -- twelve in all -- appeared this week on the Beirut-based magazine Rusted Radishes."
‘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.
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."
Winners in First-ever Barjeel Poetry Prize Hail from Palestine, Nigeria, UK, US, Egypt, and Beyond
"The winners and runners-up live in Nigeria, Lebanon, the US, Russia, the UK, Egypt, Palestine, and the UAE, with further origins in Pakistan, Syria, Palestine, and beyond. The youngest winner is 15-year-old Batool Abu Akleen, a student in Gaza."
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."
