New Poetry in Translation: ‘My Neck Against a Wall’
“Dust / devours me, / embracing my breathless lungs, / reading the glint in my ambiguous eyes.”
Poetry
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).
‘Yours, Anonymous’: Letters from Cairo
Fatima El-Kalay and Mai Serhan talk about Mai’s new collection, CAIRO: the undelivered letters.
Fadwa Tuqan’s ‘A Small Song for Despair’
This poem appears in Aisha Odeh’s second memoir, A Price for the Sun, in a section in which Odeh reflects on how an engagement with poetry found in Palestinian newspapers enabled the transformation of prison into a space of community both within and outside of the prison.
From ‘Ode to Hope’
“My river was always a Nile, / my patience, a wistful shore.”
New Poetry: ‘trapped cravings’
“howling in the air / the wind outside / the heart inside / unsettled and troubled”