{"id":16114,"date":"2018-05-16T06:59:46","date_gmt":"2018-05-16T10:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=16114"},"modified":"2018-05-16T15:16:31","modified_gmt":"2018-05-16T19:16:31","slug":"belonging-to-human-time-a-syrian-contribution-to-arab-poetics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/belonging-to-human-time-a-syrian-contribution-to-arab-poetics\/","title":{"rendered":"Belonging to Human Time: A Syrian Contribution to Arab Poetics"},"content":{"rendered":"
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via ArabLit<\/a><\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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Poet Saleh Diab recently edited a bilingual, French-Arabic, anthology of Syrian poetry:<\/em><\/p>\n

By Daniel Behar, Hussein Bin Hamza<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n

Saleh Diab\u2019s recently published bilingual anthology in French and Arabic consecrates the Syrian contribution to Arab poetics and world poetry. This selection was compiled and translated over the course of more than eight years. In this interview, Diab presents his views about the place of Syrian poets in modern Arabic poetry, discloses his criteria of selection as an anthologist, and addresses the importance of translating poetry of high aesthetic merit from Syria in the current context of the proliferation of shallow media images of the country and its arts. He also speaks of his own personal investment in reading and translating these poems, offering by the way a poetic theory of translation.<\/p>\n

The interview was first published March 20, 2018 in \u1e0caffa Thalitha<\/em>, the cultural supplement of the UK-based news platform al-Arabi al-Jadid<\/em> and is translated with the author\u2019s permission. I have also added seven poems from the anthology in my own translation into English.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Daniel Behar<\/em><\/p>\n

PhD Candidate, Harvard University\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Saleh Diab: My anthology tries to throw light on Syria\u2019s most beautiful face[1]<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n

By Hussein Bin Hamza<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since the beginning of his career, Saleh Diab has been busying himself with poetry. Not only in writing, but also in reading poetry and keeping up-to-date with it, in studying the history of Arab poetics and its modern developments that went off in various currents and included varieties of experiences and idioms. Saleh, who lives in Paris, published several collections of poetry:\u00a0A Dry Moon Watches over My Life <\/em>(1998), Greek Summer<\/em>(2006), You Go for Me with a Knife, I Go for You with a Dagger <\/em>(2009), and I Went Through My Life<\/em> (J\u2019ai visit\u00e9 ma vie<\/i>,\u00a0<\/i>2013). Aside from his own work, Saleh has also translated and written scholarship on poetry. He wrote a Doctoral Thesis on modern Arabic poetry, a Master of Advanced Studies thesis on \u201cArab Women Poets after Nazik al-Mala\u2019ika\u201d, in addition to a Master\u2019s thesis on \u201cthe Body in the Poetry of Arab Women.\u201d<\/p>\n

His latest book, Contemporary Syrian Poetry<\/em> (Po\u00e9sie Syrienne Contemporaine<\/em>, Le Castor Astral, 2018), recently appeared in French from Le Castor Astral<\/em> (with a beautiful, expressive cover by the artist Youssef Abdelke). It is an anthology of modern Syrian poetry, and as anthologies tend to do, the book has already begun to draw responses and controversy. I talked to Saleh about this anthology and the ways in which it proposes to read Syrian poetry today:<\/p>\n

Hussein Bin Hamza: What is the importance of publishing an anthology of Syrian poetry today?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Saleh Diab:\u00a0<\/strong>The book claims the title of \u201cContemporary Syrian Poetry\u201d, and so, this anthology cuts across a country called Syria, and opens up to the Arab world in its entirety. The horizon is distinctly an Arab horizon. Its importance lies in the fact that it tries to fill a gap, pave a road yet untraveled by French readers and scholars, a different road leading to modern Arabic poetry. Syrian poets opened crossings and paved paths, molded styles and discovered untouched poetic terrains in Arab poetics. Had we omitted three of them: Adonis, Muhammad al-Maghut and Nizar Qabbani, Arabic poetry would have probably looked very different today. The three of them crumbled traditional literary trends and invented new poetic sensibilities, initiated deviations, and started esthetic and artistic coups. However, in my mind, there is no stylistically particular Syrian poetry distinct from the poetry written in neighboring Arab countries. There are no multiple Arab poeticities. There is only one Arab poeticity. Individual poets, in multiple poetic idioms, are included in this poeticity. Syrian poetry had been formed in close connection with poetry in Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt, and is therefore part of an all-inclusive picture which is the picture of Arabic poetry. An anthology of poetry written in Syria is a poetic event on an Arab scale, and not an exclusively Syrian affair. And yet it presents a different image of Syrians, an image expressing the most beautiful gifts they gave to the Arab world and the world at large.<\/p>\n

HBH: Do you think the anthology is an esthetic, poetic intervention in response to what is happening in Syria in the past seven years? Was this your intention, and if so, how?<\/strong><\/p>\n

SD:\u00a0<\/b>When I started working on the anthology, I had no political purpose whatsoever. I was thinking about it long before the war. In the beginning, I started translating poems by Arab poets into French to assess the measure of their poetic strength in a different language. For the last ten years, I have also been translating Arab poets into French and vice versa for the purpose of poet gatherings here in France. During a conversation with my thesis mentor, he pointed out to me that a gap in the French library needs to be filled by producing an anthology of modern Arabic poetry in French, and that\u2019s what I have been working on for years.<\/p>\n

As any anthology, my selections aim to preserve and consecrate a certain poetics, to single it out and dwell on it, to include it and exclude other things. What stood before me was how to present the most dynamic models in a poetic movement and among poetic texts in Syria over a century. I did not merely choose poets by name, and did not randomly select poems to go with each poet, but carefully selected poems that spoke to me, poems I\u2019ve grown friendly with. I hung many of them on the walls of the rooms where I lived, and many have remained in my memory. I was determined to present French readers with what was most innovative in the Syrian poetic lab. I selected them after reading the full works of each poet, with precision, care, and inventiveness like someone arranging a bouquet of flowers, coming back home in the evening after a walk and setting it on the table. That\u2019s what the Greek term \u201canthology\u201d originally means.<\/p>\n

But in the face of human savagery and the collapse of all moral values, the pathetic role changes between victims and executors, martyrs and mercenaries, the widespread organized barbarities, the exploitation of the poor as firewood in the war\u2019s furnace, I wanted to present these Arab esthetic achievements through their Syrian example and its human depth in defiance of the proliferation of greedy political propagandists and blood merchants in the media presenting shallow kitsch as great Syrian literature. I wanted to convey to French readers a voice other than the fake voices spread by politicians, NGOs, and certain political parties. The other voice, which is being purposely erased, and which I celebrate, is the real Syrian poetic voice. It is the face of Syrians and their name.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

HBH: Are French readers also the target audience for this vision, in particular since that the book is published in a French press that specializes in poetry? <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"SD:\u00a0<\/b>Of course. But the translations are not meant solely for those who can\u2019t read Arabic. They are also for readers versed in Arabic poetry, who make themselves into translators while reading, since the book is printed in both languages.<\/p>\n

It is very important, of course, that the book is printed in a publishing house that specializes in poetry, with distribution in both France and Francophone countries, a non-partisan publishing house which has been one of the central publishers loyal to poetry for over forty years. That gives the book a good name, a sense of recognition from poetry specialists and the literary community outside the ideological interests and the profit-seeking tokenization of the Syrian tragedy. \u00a0It is also supported by the National Book Center (CNL) that consists of expert reader professors, who allowed the book to see light. I\u2019ve prepared for French readers those poems in which the imprint of translations from European poetry is most visible. Hopefully, these foreign texts will be received so that they can have an afterlife through their French reader, who is invited to see the other, the foreign, up-close, and enter deep into the other\u2019s culture through poetry. In the wrinkles of these poems we may find the esthetics of European poetry, but the Arab poets drank it all up and sank it in their own poetics. To re-introduce it in Arab form to its French readers involves us in a process of role-exchange between self and other. That\u2019s one of the traits of translation. Here the languages meet on an equal level where there is no dominating and dominated language.<\/p>\n

HBH: As in any selection or any anthology, some experiences are embraced and some are put aside. What happened in this anthology and according to what standards?<\/strong><\/p>\n

SD<\/b>: <\/em>Of course, certain esthetic and artistic criteria preceded the choices I made. These criteria are a fruit of my subjective reading and my personal views on poetry. I do not measure poetry by ideologies. This is an anthology, but it is also a unified book, and it should be read from start to finish. I chose the names based on chronologic succession, pausing to examine the relative poetic position occupied by the experience of each poet. Like any anthology, it presents the reader with a number of deliberate choices. It is an anthology, not an encyclopedia or lexicon or a comprehensive survey of each and every poet. A bouquet of chosen poems and choice depends on taste. I chose poets for whom poetry was an existential concern, poets who raised fundamental questions about its meanings and techniques, who addressed the relation between poet and self, poet and world, poet and cultural heritage, absorbing the poetic accomplishments of predecessors and contemporaries, those who turned esthetic achievements into personal ones and tried to go beyond these achievements each in his own way, poets who gave personal experience a central place in their poetics. The language of these poets is free from direct, provocative sloganizing, whether ideological, sexual, religious, or morally didactic. These poets put their heart, soul and life into their poetic experience and saw poetry as an act of belief, a dynamic identity open to the future. They went a long way in inventing new forms of expression.\u00a0 I set aside those texts that read like rhetorical or sentimental writing exercises, and those whose language was too descriptive or too much like newspeak.<\/p>\n

I did not consider gender either. Poetry is a literary genre and not a social condition. There is nothing poetic in making one quota for men and another for women. There was only one quota and that was poetry. \u00a0Arabic poetry is indebted in its spaces and forms to many translations that were lifted to the status of originals. True poetry is universal in nature. I think that I chose the poems whose humanizing vision and language structures intersect with my reading in world poetry. There are poems in dialogue with translations from Rilke, Ritsos, Vaptsarov[2]<\/strong><\/a>, Saint-John Perse and Attila.[3]<\/strong><\/a> I translated what I liked. A translator is a crossroads, a transmitter of thoughts, poetic values and cultural goods. From \u201cthere\u201d to \u201chere\u201d. But translators must find something precious to translate, something of poetic value urging them to insert the other into the self and open the \u201chere\u201d onto \u201cthere\u201d, the other onto the self and vice versa, in a process of back and forth between two cultures and languages. I\u2019m frankly baffled by the objections of some people to my selection on moral grounds, by the grumbling about the absence of X\u2019s relatives, friends or loved ones, and by the complaints that I didn\u2019t include enough of Y\u2019s poems, or the demands that I drop a quarter of the anthology because Z has a political dispute with the one of the authors.\u00a0 No one can take my place and read these poems like I did. Taking that away from me would be like robbing me or changing my title. They are asking you to play active part in a book which carries your signature, the anthology of your precious flowers which you want to dedicate to your loved one. These poems called out for me to translate them with their rich offering of poetic value and esthetic merit. Translation requires humble men and women who will hug other people\u2019s poems with affection and celebrate them as if they were their own.<\/p>\n

HBH: It should be noted that you decided to include almost none of the poets of 1960s.[4]<\/a> Why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

SD:<\/strong> I did not construct the collection generationally. In my opinion, poetry has nothing to do with this kind of periodization. I think, though, that what by agreement is called \u201cthe sixties generation\u201d of Syrians can be divided into three groups: the first group is of poets who derive from the esthetics of the Adonisian poem and recycle it. These poets do not interrogate his poetic language and go beyond it, but simply imitate it. The second group intersects with \u201cresistance\u201d poetry and has artistic structures similar to those of Nizar. These poets went in the direction of socio-historical writing with clear messages. In my opinion, these are two traditionalist groups that wanted to be derivative rather than creative or generative. They re-used what had already been produced with formal variations and took on forms of expressions drawn from predecessors or contemporaries. As for the third group, these are the poets who displayed genuine poetic consciousness and whose writing goes beyond the two other groups. They looked to writing as an extension of their bodies and souls. This would be the group of Syrian poets who budded and flourished in the free air of Beirut. They discovered new poetic forms, developed new methods of writing, and opened up to the world. Until now when I read the poems of this group I sense their faithfulness to poetry. They saw poetry as a kind of inner creative process whereby ordinary seeing transforms into vision that establishes a connection with inner life, reassembles the world and creates it anew. This group posed fundamental questions about the identity of Arabic poetry, the relation of poet to self, poet to world, poet to language and tur\u0101th. Questions of life and death that embrace the cosmos. The poet is revealed in their poem as responsible not only for himself but for the entire world. Their poetry speaks to me even today.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

HBH: From the eighties and nineties, you decided for the work of poets emerging from the University of Aleppo forum.[5]<\/a> Why didn\u2019t you include any poetic experience from the third millennium? <\/strong><\/p>\n

SD:<\/strong> I don\u2019t consider poetry through the generational lens. Badawi al-Jabal\u2019s poems speak to me far more than those of the third millennium. Again, the anthology is not constructed generationally. The city of Aleppo served in the 1980s as a literary workshop that greatly enriched Syrian literature, and the University of Aleppo literary forum is, in my opinion, the last Syrian experimental lab in terms of poetry and literature. The forum\u2019s poets showed a sharp poetic consciousness and despite the paucity of their poetic production, they wrote poems of lasting value. Their poeticism interrogated the poetics of Shi\u2018r<\/em> magazine as well as the poetics of the seventies, or what is known as the poetics of orality [al-qasida al-shafawiyya]. They also benefited from some of the poetic experiences in Lebanon of the late 1970s,[6]<\/strong><\/a> opened up to translated world poetry, and re-connected with the Arab cultural heritage. The strongly posed questions of genre: prose, poetry and tur\u0101th, the relation of poetry to reality, the task of the poet and his relation to politics and esthetics. \u00a0Their poems are timeless, belonging to human time and human place. They were not seeking after fame or publication because they thought that a poet can write only one book of poetry in his lifetime, or even one poem that carries his language and particular esthetic stamp.<\/p>\n

In my opinion, the problem of third millennium poets, as you call them, is first and foremost with reading. They have not read carefully enough the history of the modern Arab poetic movements, starting from Gibran and Rihani passing through Shi\u2018r magazine and the Iraqi innovators, and ending with the Kirkuk group and other Syrian and Lebanese poets. Their writings reveal the limitations of their poetic consciousness. The main stumbling block in their discourse is the ways in which they use language and poetic speech. They write in esthetic molds that have already been tried and exhausted. Their writing is conformist in this sense, and recycles phrases, patterns, sentences and methods that have been used up.<\/p>\n

HBH: In the anthology\u2019s French section, your translations seem to give off a whiff of artistic composition. The mere preference for certain kinds of experience is a bias informed by personal taste. Translation thus elevates personal taste to the level where it merges with artistic composition, or in the lesser estimate, carries over esthetic molds. Does the pleasure of publishing this book lie there in the end?<\/strong><\/p>\n

SD:<\/strong> The translator is the author\u2019s double and his shadow-figure. He plays a kind of shadow game of mirroring with respect to the original. The translator has to follow in the footsteps of the poet, to keep pace with him [literally: to stay hoof to hoof with the poet]. Translating, he both reads and writes. Or more precisely, he labors to attain an image from the original poem. Reading and writing meet in the process of translating. The translated text belongs to the author but the image belongs to the translator. That\u2019s why there is a copyright law to protect the rights of translators, because this image is the property of the translator, not the author. Translation is a form of writing. \u00a0It allowed me to enter the most intimate mihr\u0101b (prayer niche) of poets and see what concerns them and matters to them in the finest detail of their creative work. It made me read their texts deeply and understand them. I would not have been able to translate them with ordinary reading. Perhaps I had a certain desire to possess the poems I love through translation. Maybe I was dreaming I could become all the poets I translate. In translation reading and writing cross paths and come together, a meeting enshrined in love. I have created versions of the poems and have tried to come as close as I can to the original texts. I\u2019ve made an effort to infuse the spirit of the poems in different bodies of language. I have caused them to transmigrate and live in other bodies.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, I think that the horizon of this anthology is distinctly human. The poems I chose do not belong to a specific time and place, but to human place and human time. When I read them, I don\u2019t think of form and content, but of an enormous existential joy. The poems are no longer verbal constructs in language but amulets interpreting for me a mysterious world, to which I find no final explanation.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

Embroidery <\/strong><\/h3>\n

By Saleh Diab<\/strong><\/p>\n

Translated by Daniel Behar<\/em><\/p>\n

We have a country<\/p>\n

where we left our friends<\/p>\n

tangled together in sorrows<\/p>\n

or picturing snow<\/p>\n

hoping for the hilltops of their solitude to whiten<\/p>\n

What can we do<\/p>\n

underneath a foreign sky<\/p>\n

but listen to forgetfulness<\/p>\n

as it embroiders our lives<\/p>\n

like lace;<\/p>\n

but regret adequately<\/p>\n

in the open air<\/p>\n

and dry up<\/p>\n

reading books.<\/p>\n

FROM: A DRY MOON WATCHES OVER MY LIFE<\/em>, BEIRUT, 1998<\/h6>\n

#<\/p>\n

Place of Refuge<\/h3>\n

By Nazih Abu Afash<\/strong><\/p>\n

Translated by Daniel Behar<\/em><\/p>\n

Whenever you see a group of people agree on the Word of Truth,<\/p>\n

know for sure that you \u2013 you, the singular person \u2013 will be the scapegoat.<\/p>\n

Hence: do not agree to less than being all alone.<\/p>\n

Be alone<\/p>\n

alone with no support, no doctrine, no companion:<\/p>\n

that will be your heroism.<\/p>\n

The worst thing an ewe can do<\/p>\n

is seek refuge inside the herd.<\/p>\n

2\/4\/2011 (PUBLISHED IN AL-AKHBAR<\/em>, 3\/1\/2013)<\/h6>\n

#<\/p>\n

Siege<\/h3>\n

By Bandar Abd al-Hamid<\/strong><\/p>\n

Translated by Daniel Behar<\/em><\/p>\n

My friend Abb\u0101sa and I<\/p>\n

feel besieged by big cars<\/p>\n

and imported perfumes<\/p>\n

we escape to the empty side-streets<\/p>\n

and talk about little wars<\/p>\n

the prices of matches and tea<\/p>\n

and Saddat\u2019s visit to Israel<\/p>\n

my friend says<\/p>\n

that she heard a vague statement<\/p>\n

made by the American Foreign Secretary<\/p>\n

she laughs, my friend Abb\u0101sa,<\/p>\n

and steals a small white flower for me<\/p>\n

and we stroll along<\/p>\n

pass by the military court<\/p>\n

I extend my hand<\/p>\n

and touch hers stealthily<\/p>\n

I tell her about Tell She\u2018ir village[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

and confess to her<\/p>\n

that, in my childhood,<\/p>\n

I used to play in mud.<\/p>\n

FROM: ADVENTURES OF THE FINGERS AND THE EYES<\/em>, DAMASCUS, 1981<\/h6>\n

#<\/p>\n

The Orange<\/h3>\n

By Munzir Masri<\/strong><\/p>\n

Translated by Daniel Behar<\/em><\/p>\n

Life begins from your two thumbs<\/p>\n

holding the orange from its middle and top<\/p>\n

the moment you are hit in one eye<\/p>\n

with a squirt from its spirited juice<\/p>\n

as you break it in half.<\/p>\n

Alive. And before you<\/p>\n

two slices of orange<\/p>\n

I can see no higher moment of bliss<\/p>\n

you should aspire to no higher moment of bliss<\/p>\n

strictly defined, life<\/p>\n

is what you, in a moment, will squeeze out<\/p>\n

between your teeth\u2026<\/p>\n

DAMASCUS<\/em><\/h6>\n

#<\/p>\n

Aleppo<\/h3>\n

By Muhammad Fu\u2019ad<\/strong><\/p>\n

Translated by Daniel Behar<\/em><\/p>\n

Where letters are locked up in mailboxes<\/p>\n

and the passerby,<\/p>\n

moving from one caf\u00e9 to another,<\/p>\n

drinks his coffee salted.<\/p>\n

where boredom rises up<\/p>\n

stone over stone<\/p>\n

and the old epic tales<\/p>\n

are no good anymore<\/p>\n

for passing the time.<\/p>\n

Peace upon you, insects<\/p>\n

climbing up the table<\/p>\n

the waiter<\/p>\n

will clear you out<\/p>\n

with one blow<\/p>\n

from his dirty rag!<\/p>\n

FROM: THE ONE LEFT ASIDE<\/em>, DAMASCUS, 1998<\/h6>\n

#<\/p>\n

Never Mind<\/h3>\n

By Adel Mahmoud<\/strong><\/p>\n

Translated by Daniel Behar<\/em><\/p>\n

O, policeman<\/p>\n

my dear policeman<\/p>\n

raise the gallows higher<\/p>\n

a little higher<\/p>\n

a little bit higher<\/p>\n

towards the blue sky:<\/p>\n

For I am<\/p>\n

a tall<\/p>\n

man!<\/p>\n

FROM: DRAFTS ON THE WORLD<\/em>, DAMASCUS, 1981<\/h6>\n

#<\/p>\n

The Dagger<\/h3>\n

By Riyad al-Saleh Hussein<\/strong><\/p>\n

Translated by Daniel Behar<\/em><\/p>\n

The man died<\/p>\n

Dagger in his heart<\/p>\n

Smile on his lips<\/p>\n

The man died<\/p>\n

He takes a walk in his grave<\/p>\n

Looks up<\/p>\n

Looks down<\/p>\n

Looks all around<\/p>\n

Nothing but earth<\/p>\n

Nothing but the shining fist<\/p>\n

Of the dagger in his chest<\/p>\n

The dead man smiles<\/p>\n

And fondles the dagger-handle<\/p>\n

The dagger is his only friend<\/p>\n

The dagger \u2013<\/p>\n

A dear memory from those on top.<\/p>\n

\u00a0FROM: A MOUNTAIN GOAT IN THE WOODS<\/em>, DAMASCUS, 1983<\/h6>\n

Saleh Diab was born in Aleppo in 1967. As a poet, journalist, and literary critic, he has published in numerous newspapers and periodicals<\/em>. He has translated a number of poets from Arabic into French (Salah Fa\u00efk, Huda a-Daghfag, Yehia Jaber, Youssef Bazzi, Mohamed al Maghout, Nazih Abou Afach, Riad As-Salih Housein, Abed ar-Rahi al-Khassar, others) and from French into Arabic (Jean-Yves Masson, Jacqueline Risset, Marie-Claire Bancquart, Gabrielle Althen, Annie Salager, Liliane Giraudon, Rachida Madani, Mohammed Hamoudan)<\/em>. He has also published three collections of poetry<\/em>, Kamaroun Yabison Yatani Bihayati (Editions Dar Al Jadid, Beirut, 1998), which was translated into French as<\/em> Une lune s\u00e8che veille sur ma vie (A Dry Moon Watches over My Life) (Editions Comp\u2019Act, 2004), Saif Yonanai\/A Greek Summer<\/em> (Editions M\u00e9rite, Cairo, 2006), Tourslina Sikinanan, Aoursilou Khanjaran\/ You Go for Me with a Knife, and I Go for You with a Dagger (Editions Charqiat, Cairo, 2009) and has edited an anthology of contemporary Syrian poetry<\/em>, Nawares Sawdaa\/Black Seagulls (Editions Maison de la po\u00e9sie, Alger, 2007). Has also published a book of critical essays on contemporary women\u2019s poetry in Arabic<\/em>, Container of Sufferings\/ R\u00e9cipient de douleur (Editions Clapas, 2007). A collection of his poems published in 2013,<\/em> I Went Through My Life\/ J\u2019ai visit\u00e9 ma vie, won the Thyde Monnier Prize of the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 des Gens de Lettres<\/em>. In March 2018, Le Castor Astral \u00a0published his latest edited volume,<\/em> Contemporary Syrian Poetry \/ Poesie syrienne contemporaine.\u00a0His poetry has been translated into English by Paul Roddie, John Doherty, and Daniel Behar.<\/p>\n

Diab has lived in France since 2000.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

Daniel Behar (dbehar@fas.harvard.edu<\/span>) is a PhD student of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, currently\u00a0writing a dissertation on modern Arabic poetry in Syria. His publications include poetry\u00a0translations from Muhammad al-Maghut and Sargon Boulus into Hebrew.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> \u201c\u1e0caffa Tahlitha<\/a>\u201d, Al-Arabi al-Jadid, March 20, 2018:<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> The Bulgarian poet Nikola Vaptsarov (1909-1942) who was translated and widely received in Syrian poetry of the 1970s.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> The Hungarian poet Attila J\u00f3zsef (1905-1937), who was likewise translated and received in Syria in the same time-period.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Bin Hamza here mainly refers to Muhammad Amran, Ali al-Jundi, Mamdu\u1e25 Adwan, and Fayiz Khaddur, the most representative Syrian poets of the period.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> al-Multaqa al-Adabi fi\u00a0Jami\u2018at Halab is an important literary forum of young Syrian poets and fiction writers that used to assemble weekly in the University of Aleppo in the early 1980s. Some of the participants in this forum \u2013 Khaled Khalifa and Nihad Sirees particularly \u2013\u00a0 have become well-known on the Arab and international stage.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Probably referring to the prose poem style of Lebanese poet Abbas Beydoun.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> A village in the far north of Syria, right on the border with Turkey, and very close to the town of Kobane.<\/p>\n