{"id":15593,"date":"2017-11-18T09:24:11","date_gmt":"2017-11-18T13:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=15593"},"modified":"2017-11-18T09:24:11","modified_gmt":"2017-11-18T13:24:11","slug":"kareem-james-abu-zeid-wins-nea-fellowship-for-retranslation-of-hanging-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/kareem-james-abu-zeid-wins-nea-fellowship-for-retranslation-of-hanging-poems\/","title":{"rendered":"Kareem James Abu-Zeid Wins NEA Fellowship for Retranslation of \u2018Hanging\u00a0Poems\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Excellent news, as we can really use a new translation of what are the founding poems of Arab culture, predating the Quran, & as the story goes, called “the hanging ones” because sewn into cloth hangings that adorned the Kaaba in Mecca until the Quran displaced them. Poems \u2014 odes, or better qasidas \u2014 of great formal complexity, very difficult to translate, indeed: I tried my hand at it when I lived in the Maghreb in the late 70s with the help of an Iraqi friend & translated my favorite Mu’allaqat, that of the poet Tarafa \u2014 a complex working that needed a prose commentary to make clear \/ excuse? \/ what I had to do to get a poem that for me worked in English. You can check them out here<\/a> or on pages 50 to 55 of my A Nomad Poetics.<\/em><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Details via the always informative & useful Arab Literature (in English)<\/em> & by\u00a0MLYNXQUALEY<\/a><\/span><\/span> on<\/em> 0<\/a> )<\/span><\/p>\n

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Accepting his recent PEN award.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Translator Kareem James Abu-Zeid has won a $25,000 grant to support the retranslation of the classic Arabic works known as the \u201cHanging Poems,\u201d or al-Mu\u2018allaq\u0101t:<\/em><\/p>\n

Abu-Zeid was announced as one of 22 grantees<\/a> to win National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) support for their translations. His is for this collection of foundational works of pre-Islamic poetry.<\/p>\n

Abu-Zeid said, in a recent interview with\u00a0Words Without Borders<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

For over ten years now, I\u2019ve been thinking about translating the main (and most famous) group of pre-Islamic Arabic poems, which are called the Mu\u2019allaqat<\/em>, or \u201cHanging Poems.\u201d There are ten of them (some historians number them at seven rather than ten), and they\u2019re all very long and unique expressions of the ethos and harsh life in the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula in the sixth and early seventh centuries CE. They are the very first works of Arabic literature, and are akin to Beowulf<\/em> or the Chanson de Roland<\/em> in terms of their cultural importance. In my view, they\u2019ve never really had a solid poetic translation in English (though there are some good academic ones out there). So I want to really bring them to life, like Seamus Heaney did for Beowulf <\/em>or Robert Fagles did for Homer. I also want to put them on the map of world literature\u2014it\u2019s important for me that they come out at a larger press, rather than one that specializes primarily in Arabic literature. But it\u2019s a huge undertaking\u2014the texts are long and extremely challenging linguistically. I translated the first and most famous one (by Imru al-Qays) to try to secure some grant money to help facilitate the project, but it\u2019s hard to get funding for a retranslation, and so far I\u2019m 0 for 1 in terms of the grants I\u2019ve applied to. We\u2019ll see what comes of the project\u2014I have a feeling it will happen, sooner or later.<\/p>\n

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Previous English translations of Al-Mu\u02bfallaq\u0101t<\/em> include, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica<\/a>, \u201cThe Seven Golden Odes of Pagan Arabia<\/em> (1903) by Lady Anne and Sir Wilfrid Scawen Blunt<\/a>, The Seven Odes<\/em>(1957, reissued 1983) by A.J. Arberry, The Seven Poems Suspended in the Temple at Mecca<\/em> (1973, originally published in 1893) by Frank E. Johnson, and The Golden Odes of Love<\/em> (1997) by Desmond O\u2019Grady.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n

\u201cUnlike much older translations of this work,\u201d the award citation says, \u201cthis new translation will be more poetic and accessible. Each poem will be contextualized with a brief introduction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Abu-Zeid has been distinguished by several translation awards, including \u201cPEN Center USA\u2019s 2017 translation prize, Poetry Magazine\u2019s 2014 translation prize, a Fulbright research fellowship, and translation residencies from the Lannan Foundation and the Banff International Center for the Arts, among other honors.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Excellent news, as we can really use a new translation of what are the founding poems of Arab culture, predating the Quran, & as the story goes, called “the hanging ones” because sewn into...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12,91,103,1],"tags":[1849],"class_list":["post-15593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arab-culture","category-arabic","category-poetry","category-translation","category-uncategorized","tag-kareem-james-abu-zeid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15593","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=15593"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15596,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15593\/revisions\/15596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}