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.
Poetry
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.”
New Poetry in Translation: Anas al-Ghouri’s ‘Dream-Drenched Theft’
Here, Syrian poet Anas al-Ghouri reflects back on “wish-filled pockets” and the shoes that would reclaim childhood from want.
New Poetry by Ramzi Salem: ‘A Body of Nakedness’
In this new work, by Palestinian poet Ramzi Salem, when “our habits shatter before our eyes,” there is a new vision of belonging: “these candles will become a homeland, / painting our silhouettes on the tent’s walls, / multiplying us in warmth and number.”
Sargon Boulus’s ‘Baudelaire’s Pain Arrived’
In this evocative 1969 poem, translated by Miles Cayman, Sargon Boulus writes: “my bankruptcy grew into a bird, / my love into an ember.”
New Poetry: Sargon Boulus’s ‘A Story’
In this brief poem by Boulus, translated by Miles Cayman, “Suddenly by chance and without warning / The table had / Vanished, the guests dispersed[.]”
Translating the Unseen: Gaza’s Sky and Anne Carson’s Vision
Translating the Unseen: Gaza’s Sky and Anne Carson’s Vision By Alaa Alqaisi It began with an email from Dr. James Heaney, a professor of English and Irish studies at Carlow […]