{"id":12641,"date":"2014-12-17T05:10:46","date_gmt":"2014-12-17T09:10:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=12641"},"modified":"2014-12-16T05:13:03","modified_gmt":"2014-12-16T09:13:03","slug":"2014-year-of-the-arabic-poem-in-translation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/2014-year-of-the-arabic-poem-in-translation\/","title":{"rendered":"2014: Year of the Arabic Poem (in\u00a0Translation)"},"content":{"rendered":"

via Arabic Literature (in English)<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

BY MLYNXQUALEY<\/a><\/span><\/span> on<\/em> 0<\/a> )<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

There were at least nine contemporary Arabic poetry collections published in translation this year, a number of them stunning, ground-breaking, beautifully produced:<\/em><\/p>\n

Certainly there were more novels than poetry collections \u2014 I have yet to do a full tally, but there are always many more novels. Yet to have nine poetry collections translated in a year is an enormous jump, although distribution\u00a0and readership is\u00a0another thing entirely.<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a>Nothing More to Lose<\/em>, Najwan Darwish, ed. and trans. Kareem James Abu-Zeid (NYRB<\/a>).<\/strong> This is the first collection of Palestinian Najwan Darwish\u2019s poems to appear in English, chosen and curated by Abu-Zeid (a task he clearly enjoyed), and it was the most widely discussed and reviewed among this year\u2019s collections, making NPR\u2019s best-of list<\/a> for 2014 and earning Abu-Zeid a Poetry <\/em>magazine translation award<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Abu-Zeid wrote, in his afterword, that<\/a> \u201cNo Palestinian has ever written poetry quite like this before.\u201d Yet\u00a0there are echoes of the poetry-audience relationship of elder Palestinian poets, particularly\u00a0when one sees Darwish\u2019s poetry set to music and delighting hundreds of concert-goers, who recite along.<\/p>\n

Darwish\u2019s poetry is also fresh \u2014 personal, funny, angry, political (at a slant), and direct.<\/p>\n

\"2\"<\/a>Petra<\/em>, Amjad Nasser, trans. Fady Joudah (Tavern Books<\/a>).<\/strong> This surprisingly wonderful\u00a0chapbook\u00a0brings us\u00a0a single narrative travel poem, walking us into\u00a0Petra, where we experience and transcend time. It is one of the most remarkable books of the year, and far-too-little-attended, in part perhaps because Nasser was blocked from travel to the US when it launched<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This\u00a0gorgeously crafted work could be read either as poetry or as an unconventional travel guide, bringing us inside this ancient place \u2014 Jordan\u2019s Petra \u2014 along with Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, who \u201cdiscovered\u201d it for Westerners, and then continuing to breathe, touch, and listen our\u00a0way through history and language, architecture, and geography.<\/p>\n

A combination of verse and prose, Nasser touches the site as we touch it, leaving us with \u201cOnly this hand \/ that returned with a map of smells and signs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chronicles of Majnun Layla and Selected Poems<\/em>, Qassim Haddad, trans. John Verlenden and Ferial Ghazoul (Syracuse University Press<\/a>)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"3\"<\/a>The lion\u2019s share\u00a0of this beautiful collection<\/a> is a series of narrative works that re-invent the legendary love of Qays and Layla. In most versions, their love is chaste, and the couple is united only in death. Literary and visual adaptations have largely maintained this chastity, and many retellings of Qays and Layla\u2019s story developed Sufi overtones, where Layla becomes a stand-in for man\u2019s desire for God.<\/p>\n

Haddad turns against tradition and takes the story in a completely different direction. In his poems, Qays\u2019 desire is definitely not for God: It\u2019s for a flesh-and-blood Layla. Qays here is not a madman. Instead, he is a knowing violator of societal taboos.<\/p>\n

The cycle of poems plays on the spaces between imagination, official histories, and fable. They cite historical sources, but then undermine these sources\u2019 credibility. In the end, Qays and Layla are so subversive that even Haddad\u2019s narrative cannot contain them. In the long prose poem \u201cTowards It at Every Turn\u201d:<\/p>\n

So Qays\u2014thanks to his madness\u2014became free not only from the power of the sultan and the tribe, but also\u2014and especially\u2014from the boundaries imposed on him by the transmitters of his story. We still find him stepping out and escaping, over and over.<\/p>\n

A Bird Is Not a Stone, ed. Henry Bell and Sarah Irving, authors and trans. various (Freight Books<\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"A_bird_is_not_a_stone_270.270\"<\/a>The A Bird is not a Stone<\/em>\u00a0collection gathers together\u00a0twenty-nine of Scotland\u2019s celebrated poets, who co-translate work by twenty-five contemporary Palestinians. The works are brought not just into English, but into Scots, Gaelic, and Shetlandic.<\/p>\n

These are not the \u201cusual suspects.\u201d Liz\u00a0Lochhead notes, in her introduction, that the 25 Palestinian poets included in the collection have rarely been translated into English. When they were, \u201cit was always by academics and generally to be quoted as part of polemical, theoretical, or literary essays and in obscure publications. They were made into far less than poems, or were sometimes effectively censored by the omission of some of their content.\u201d<\/p>\n

The poems are not all equally successful. There are bright moments that open up new mental vistas and there are moments that feel too clever (the poem about Viagra), or too well-worn (Sufi spirituality). But there are also moments of genuine surprise, and the nature of the translation project itself makes the collection interesting.<\/p>\n

This Room is Waiting<\/em>, ed. Lauren Pyott and Ryan Van Winkle, authors and trans. various (Freight Books<\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"4\"<\/a>This Room is Waiting\u00a0<\/em>was crafted on a similar premise \u2014 bridge translators helped bring work to English-language poets, who fashioned new work. Similarly, work was translated from English into Kurdish and Arabic in a collaboration between four UK and four Iraqi poets.<\/p>\n

There are some gaps in understanding, and translational misdirections, but nonetheless the collection works to bring new poems to life.<\/p>\n

The bridging process, Pyott has said<\/a>, can really bring out the politics of translation in a way that they might not appear when just one person is struggling with the work.<\/p>\n

The process, she says, has \u201craised some really interesting questions: How do you write your own version of a poem which you don\u2019t necessarily agree with (politically)?\u201d<\/p>\n

The Tahrir of Poems: Seven Contemporary Egyptian Poets<\/em>, ed. and trans. Maged Zaher (Alice Blue Books<\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"5\"<\/a>This collection brings together work by seven young Egyptian poets between the ages of 25 and 33, all originally in Arabic but for the work by Amira Hanafi, poets, in Zaher\u2019s words, who \u201chad their own aesthetic revolution against the bareness of cultural life under Mubarak.\u201d<\/p>\n

The poems are diverse, but many of the best are full of the details of daily life in Cairo. From Ahmed Nada\u2019s \u201cUntitled,\u201d which takes place on the Metro:<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the intercom warns of the stampede at the doors
\nThe standing are eagerly monitoring the sitting
\nAwaiting the opportunity to occupy their seats
\nA child passes through them selling small copies of the Quran
\nI remember my old ambition
\nTo be a street seller
\nMy body stretches on the seat
\nAnd awaits the next stop<\/p>\n

\"6\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Salah Faik: Selected Poems<\/em>, ed. and trans. Haider al-Kabi (Dar Safi<\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Born in 1945 in Kirkuk, Iraq, Faik\u00a0is an important contemporary poet who has been translated by Sinan Antoon<\/a>, Raphael Cohen<\/a>, and Maged Zaher<\/a>, among others. This collection has many wonderful, deceptively simple poems, although the translation is not always light on its feet. Here, from \u201cDream Season\u201d:<\/p>\n

I woke up at the voice of a muezzin. \u201cWhat is this muezzin doing here in London?\u201d I wondered. A moment later, it turned out that it was the sirens of police cars, fire fighters, and ambulances.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iraqi Nights<\/em>, Dunya Mikhail, trans. Kareem James Abu-Zeid (New Directions<\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Iraqi_Nights_300_450\"<\/a>This book \u2014 another translation by Abu-Zeid \u2014 made the best-of 2014 list by \u201cSplit This Rock.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0From their citation:<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough the pervasive pain of war on the street, home, and soul in this collection threaten grief and paralysis, the poet continuously weaves in visions of a future outside of violence, of a place where \u2018every moment \/ something ordinary \/ will happen under the sun.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Poems from this collection were also part of the reason for\u00a0Abu-Zeid earning aPoetry <\/em>magazine translation award<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It Took Place in this House<\/em>, Amal Gamal, trans. Faiza Sultan (Dar Safi<\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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