Muzaffar al-Nawwab’s ‘One Day, We’ll Return to Our People’
A poem of return by the great Iraqi poet Muzaffar al-Nawwab.
Poetry
Poetry in Translation: ‘Taking a Break from Despair’
There is a beautiful moment in iconic Syrian poet Riyad al-Saleh al-Hussein’s “War. War. War,” here translated by Ibtihal Rida Mahmood, when the narrator sees his beloved on a beach, “Taking a break from despair / She asks me about a delicious place with no police / A place where we could exchange poems and kisses,” and the narrator tells her about this place.
New Poetry in Translation: Jehad Abu Dayya’s ‘When I Die’
Jehad Abu Dayya, a poet and doctor in Gaza, has just released his first poetry collection, مذبوح في هامش الوقت. The poem “When I Die” appears here in Alaa Alqaisi’s translation.
New Poetry in Translation: Baraa’h Qandeel’s ‘Suffocation’
Baraa’h Qandeel is one of the 16 emerging literary translators accepted to our Summer 2025 Gaza Literary Translation Workshop, supported by Palestine Writes. Here, she translates one of her own poems.
New Poetry in Translation: ‘My Neck Against a Wall’
“Dust / devours me, / embracing my breathless lungs, / reading the glint in my ambiguous eyes.”
Armed with October: Thawra and Poetry, from Khartoum to Toronto
Here, Khaldah Salih and Fathima Cader interweave a translation of “October Al Akhdar” with their reflections on the lessons that historic and ongoing struggle in Sudan provide for liberation struggles everywhere.
Poetry from Michrafy Abdelwadoud: ‘Cat Love’
We are a little more than 20% of the way toward our goal with our summer “Buy a Back Issue” campaign. This poem, by Moroccan poet Michrafy Abdelwadoud, appeared in CATS issue of the magazine; you can support the campaign by buying a copy of this or other back issues or backlist books, available now through ArabLit.org/Shop.
What Have I Done to Love You Twice?
A new poem by Syrian author-architect Saer Wadoud in Alaa Alqaisi’s translation: “She is from here— / from our tears. / Ordinary as our battered land, / yet none resemble her.”
Five Poems by Hend Jouda
These five poems are by Hend Jouda, a poet from Gaza whose grandparents were displaced from the village of Ashdod in 1948. Born in the Bureij refugee camp in 1983, Jouda has published three collections: Someone Always Leaves (2013), No Sugar in the City (2017), and A Finger That Managed to Survive (2024).