{"id":11937,"date":"2014-04-23T09:23:31","date_gmt":"2014-04-23T13:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=11937"},"modified":"2014-04-23T09:23:31","modified_gmt":"2014-04-23T13:23:31","slug":"new-palestinian-poetry-flourishes-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/new-palestinian-poetry-flourishes-online\/","title":{"rendered":"New Palestinian poetry flourishes online"},"content":{"rendered":"

via Electronic Intifada<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Submitted by\u00a0Sarah Irving<\/span>\u00a0on Tue, 04\/22\/2014 – 21:52<\/span><\/div>\n
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\"Cover<\/p>\n
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Najwan Darwish\u2019s new volume of poetry, out soon from NYRB Classics<\/h6>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The last few weeks have seen a generous selection of Palestinian poetry appear in online publications. As well as reflecting the role of the Internet in making translated literature available across the globe, the diversity of the poems themselves shows the many ways in which writers in occupied Palestine and the diaspora use art to explore their particular situations.<\/p>\n

First up is Yousef el Qedra\u2019s prose-poem \u201cIt Was Concealed in Interpretation,\u201d published in the new edition of online literature journal\u00a0Asymptote<\/a><\/em>, in a translation by Yasmin Snounu, Edward Morin and Yasser Tabbaa. These lines give a small taste of the dark, passionate and ambiguous intensity of the poem:<\/p>\n

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The fire said to the desert:\u00a0Woe to the thirsty<\/span>, and a thirsty person said:\u00a0Woe to the fire from my cruelty<\/span>; the desert\u2019s eyes remained closed, absorbed in imagination.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s worth noting the link in the right-hand corner of\u00a0Asymptote\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0page, which allows readers to hear el Qedra reading the poem in the original Arabic.<\/p>\n

Similarly vivid and beautiful, but at times much more direct, is an untitled work by Dima Yousef, translated by Fawaz Azem and published on the\u00a0Arabic Literature (in English) blog<\/a>. Yousef, a Palestinian living in Damascus, writes movingly of the pain of existence in the midst of the Syrian civil war:<\/p>\n

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This winter has been very hard without you. My woolen scarves, which you no longer share with me, remain cold, without warmth, an orgy of color devoid of meaning that I wrap around my neck and that only serves to stifle my breaths. I remember our quarrels over one of them that I saw on the shoulder of one of your friends.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Words Without Borders<\/em>, meanwhile, showcases three poems by Mazen Maarouf, translated by\u00a0Kareem James Abu-Zeid and Nathalie Handal<\/em>. The triad \u2013 \u201cOn Death<\/a>,\u201d \u201cDowntown<\/a>\u201c\u00a0and\u00a0A Stray Bullet<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 demonstrate Maarouf\u2019s spare, often ironic style:<\/p>\n

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and after passing by the washer and my mother (exhausted in spite of the washer), a stray bullet veered slightly off course\u2014 by the force of gravity\u2014<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Specialist poetry magazine\u00a0The Bakery<\/em>\u00a0has six poems by Ashraf Zaghal, translated by Ghada Moura, in its \u201cfeatured poets\u201d series. The magazine describes Zaghal as amongst \u201cthe first generation of Palestinian poets who have introduced a new aesthetics and a new poetic sensitivity into post-1948 Palestinian poetry, moving away from the common national struggle diction and thematic used by the late great Mahmoud Darwish and his followers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The works featured are \u201cThe Wind\u2019s Actions<\/a>,\u201d \u201cOur Absent Garden<\/a>,\u201d \u201cStation<\/a>,\u201d \u201cA Red Hand<\/a>,\u201d \u201cSnow Metamorphoses<\/a>\u201d and \u201cA Plan<\/a>,\u201d excerpted here:<\/p>\n

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Tomorrow I will start a new day A different day I will start a day without a wristwatch Without a cell phone Without a time frame I will start a new day with the idea of \u201cday\u201d I will start a day without \u201cday\u201d \u2026..<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Finally, the\u00a0NYRB Classics Tumblr<\/a>\u00a0features several poems by Najwan Darwish, also translated by Kareem James abu-Zeid, the trailers for a book which I will be reviewing on The Electronic Intifada in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

via Electronic Intifada: Submitted by\u00a0Sarah Irving\u00a0on Tue, 04\/22\/2014 – 21:52 Najwan Darwish\u2019s new volume of poetry, out soon from NYRB Classics The last few weeks have seen a generous selection of Palestinian poetry appear...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,91,103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine","category-poetry","category-translation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11937"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11941,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11937\/revisions\/11941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}