New Poetry by Hameed Qasim: ‘Baghdad Melancholy’
“This is Baghdad’s melancholy waving to me from afar,” Hamid Qasim writes, in a poem translated by Ghareeb Iskander and illustrated by Nasir Mounes.
Poetry
New Poetry in Translation: Enter ‘Butterfly’s Burden’
In this poem, Dalia Taha writes that she “picked up ‘The Butterfly’s Burden’ / and could not put it down.”
Two Poems by Haitham K. Al-Zubbaidi
A Helmet of Brass By Haitham K. Al-Zubbaidi Translated by Ali Layth Azeez Nothing in me betrays the clouds’ expectations except that I am so deep in aridity. Nothing in […]
![Left to right) Khālidah Sa‘īd, Nāzik al-Malā’ikah, Fadwa Ṭūqān, and Salma Jayyusi.[1] [1] Image from Shi‘r 4, no. 1 (1960). Credit Princeton University Libraries.](https://arablit.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Left-to-right-Khalidah-Sa‘id-Nazik-al-Malaikah-Fadwa-Ṭuqan-and-Salma-Jayyusi.1-1-Image-from-Shi‘r-4-no.-1-1960.-Credit-Princeton-University-Libraries.jpg "Left to right) Khālidah Sa‘īd, Nāzik al-Malā’ikah, Fadwa Ṭūqān, and Salma Jayyusi.[1] [1] Image from Shi‘r 4, no. 1 (1960). Credit Princeton University Libraries.")
Fadwa Tuqan: ‘The Last Flower atop Memory’s Stone’
“The poem itself exemplifies a spirit—uncommon neither for the time nor for the magazine’s cohort—that struggled to break free from past delusions and memories, despite their seductive pull.”
New Poetry after Darwish: ‘In Praise of What Is No Longer Ours’
The great twentieth-century poet Mahmoud Darwish was born on this day in 1941. Today, author-translator Alaa Alqaisi shares a letter to Darwish and a poem, after Darwish’s “In Praise of the High Shadow.”
Nasser Rabah’s ‘I Was Sand’
“I Was Sand” is set to appear in Nasser Rabah’s Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece, which is forthcoming from City Lights next month.
Ibrahim Nasrallah’s ‘Do You Hear Me? What Now?’
This poem, by the acclaimed Palestinian poet Ibrahim Nasrallah, was originally published in al-Quds. It asks, relentlessly, refusing to cede the present: “What now?”
From Mohamed N.M. Ali’s ‘The Call of Stillness’
These two poems, from Mohamed N.M. Ali latest collection, “نداء السكون” (The Call of Stillness), search for a self and selfhood “in the evening of oblivion.”
‘Dialogue’: A Poem by Mostafa Ibrahim
A dialogue between the present and the absent, the living and the dead. In this poem, “The world’s always / a step ahead. I caught / myself laughing two days / ago, while you, my friend, / haven’t made it / one year under / the dirt.”