New Releases in March & April 2023: Poetry from Iraq and Sudan, a Historical Novel from Egypt
From March and April, a list of recently released and forthcoming novels, poetry collections, and a study of Sudanese poetry.
James Montgomery
James Montgomery on Translation, ‘The Vehicle I’ve Been Looking For All Along’
There was a point at which I thought: ‘translation is the vehicle I have been looking for all along for me to try and bring the poetry to life without suffocating or crushing it under this enormously academic super structure.’ Of course, you need all the academic stuff to get inside the poem.
‘Loss Sings’ and the Relevance of Poetry from Nearly a Millennium and a Half Ago
“The effect is one laden with impact; the depth of Al-Khansāʾ’s pain and the sense of an unrelenting onward force which strips away her strength and vitality is palpable.”
Bulaq 23: ‘Poems That Cross Language and Time’
“We focused our talk on her “duets,” recent works that move between Arabic and English.”
James Montgomery on Listening to the ‘Antarah in His Bones
“It was very, very liberating to have gone through that experience—to be forced to be honest with myself.”
James Montgomery on When ‘All Poets Were Warriors’
“In other words, it’s important to welcome and embrace the uncertainties rather than to dismiss them[.]”
‘Loss Sings’: Translating Grief
“Experienced translators know that for literary translations to be possible they must decide what they are prepared to leave out as much as what they have to retain…literary translation is thus more akin to trauma than it is to memory.”
Reading ‘Antarah in the 21st Century
“I have tried to translate this at least 10 times before this particular version. I did one of these in the style of Beowulf, I did one of these in a sort of minimalist Ted Hughes…”
ʿAntarah ibn Shaddād’s ‘War Songs’: ‘Tenderness Beneath the Violence’
” The push to translate his verse came when a production company phoned Philip Kennedy, the general editor of LAL, about an `Antarah movie starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.”