Who swims the ocean is become as brine. Who climbs the mountain is transformed to air.”
Read moreFriday Finds: Dreams of Iman Mersal and Sargon Boulus
Two new dream poems have recently appeared in translation, online.
Read more
Arabic Translation Challenge: ‘An Angel Appears’
“The beginning, we choose. / But the end chooses us. / And there is no road but the road.”
Read more
Friday Finds: 13 Poems by Youssef Rakha
“& I didn’t taste her lips / & company didn’t show until the final day I filled the space that’s for your body / consciously or lost”
Read more
Friday Finds: Talks with Ahmed Saadawi, Elias Khoury, & Youssef Rakha
“What I mean by this is only in English could I fully inhabit and write from the perspective of a woman. I have no idea why, but I’m sure it’s nothing to do with the nature of English itself as a language.”
Read more
Teaching with Arabic Literature in Translation: The Creative Writing Workshop
“If in the classroom you’re able to compare multiple translations of a single work, and/or read essays by translators on their craft, this offers rich and rigorous examples of how choices are made on the level of word, phrase, syntax, diction, metaphor, image, so on. Such examples of precision and multiplicity are ideal for student writers.”
Read more‘A Hundred Steps from the Revolution’ and the State of Arabic Nonfiction
Non-fiction is also something writers of [Arabic] fiction and poetry seem to think they can do with their eyes shut.
Read moreArabic Poetry Friday: Beirut39er Nazem Elsayed, Coptic Egyptian Poets, Translating Abboud al Jabiri, More
Over on The Arabophile, poet/novelist/critic Youssef Rakha makes his way through and around two books by the young Lebanese poet Nazem Elsayed, one of the poetic standouts of the Beirut39 group.
Read moreFriday Links: Facebook as the New Literature, Reviews, and Taha Hussein Defended
This may be the week of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, but the most delightful thing I read this week was Youssef Rakha’s “Virtually there,” in Al Ahram Weekly. (We’ll just blame an editor for the meaningless headline.)
Read more