{"id":16610,"date":"2019-06-11T03:38:25","date_gmt":"2019-06-11T07:38:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=16610"},"modified":"2019-06-11T03:38:25","modified_gmt":"2019-06-11T07:38:25","slug":"in-celebration-of-amjad-nasser-a-poet-who-mourns-himself-while-still-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/in-celebration-of-amjad-nasser-a-poet-who-mourns-himself-while-still-alive\/","title":{"rendered":"In Celebration of Amjad Nasser, a Poet Who \u2018Mourns Himself While Still Alive\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via the always excellent ArabLit<\/a>\u00a0came the news this morning of Amjad Nasser’s illness. I met him many years ago, in Paris, & he & his writing were immediately very close to me. It was he who sent me a xerox of the out-of-print English translation of Niffari’s Book of Stations<\/em>, a sufi concept \u2014 the station, the maw’qif \u2014 that would become essential to a core aspect of my thinking on a nomadic poetics. It was also Amjad who first translated poems of mine into Arabic & published them in the pages of Al Quds Al Arabi<\/em> in London, the paper he co-founded.<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0Last month, Jordanian poet, journalist, and novelist Amjad Nasser published a small collection of poems online<\/a>\u00a0about coming to terms with the end of his life after his brain tumors had resisted treatment. The poems have been met<\/a> with shock, grief, and admiration:<\/em><\/p>\n

The poems were apparently written after a visit to Charing Cross Hospital in London, at which Nasser was told that treatments had failed to control the tumors growing in his brain.<\/p>\n

Nasser was born Yahia Numeiri al-Naimat in al-Turra, Jordan in 1955. He started his career as a journalist and activist for Palestinian rights, working between Amman, Beirut, and Cyprus. His poetic debut,\u00a0Praise for Another Caf\u00e9,\u00a0<\/i>came in 1979, when he was twenty-four, with a preface by the great Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef.<\/p>\n

In 1987, Nasser co-founded Al-Quds Al-Arabi<\/em> daily newspaper in London, and he worked there in the decades that followed.<\/p>\n

Although Nasser is best-known as a poet and journalist, he has published in multiple genres, including poetry, travel writing, and novels. Indeed, his work weaves between styles and genres; the narrator of his poetic novel Land of No Rain <\/em><\/a>says,\u00a0of his own writing, that it doesn\u2019t fall into a \u201ccategory that\u2019s recognised on the literary scene, and it\u2019s hard to persuade people that it exists.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Amjad Nasser\u2019s work does indeed exist \u2014 poem-novels, poem-travel-writing, and poem-journalism \u2014 and is widely celebrated among authors and word-lovers. This week, the literary journal\u00a0Akhbar al-Adab\u00a0<\/em>dedicated an issue to Nasser and his work<\/a>, which features essays by Ghassan Zaqtan, Tarek al-Tayeb, Qassim Haddad, Hoda Barakat, and others.<\/p>\n

Several of Nasser\u2019s works have been translated into English. In 2009, poet-translator Khaled Mattawa brought together a collection titled\u00a0Shepherd of Solitude: Selected Poems<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>Nasser\u2019s first novel, published in Arabic in 2011, appeared in English in 2014 as Land of No Rain.<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>Its translator, Jonathan Wright, called the book \u201cas close to\u00a0being the book I would have liked to\u00a0write as\u00a0any Arabic book could be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also in 2014, one of Nasser\u2019s poems, \u201cA Song and Three Questions<\/a>,\u201d was chosen by the\u00a0Saison Poetry Library<\/a>\u00a0as one of the \u201c50 greatest love poems of the last 50 years,\u201d among all poems worldwide, and Nasser was invited to inaugurate New York University\u2019s \u201cGallatin Global Writers series.\u201d However, the US Department of Homeland Security denied him entry into the United States<\/a>. Nasser instead inaugurated the series over Skype.<\/p>\n

Nasser went on to write a second novel, Here Is the Rose<\/a>, <\/em>which\u00a0was longlisted for the 2018 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, and he won the Mahmoud Darwish Award for Literary Creativity in 2019.<\/p>\n

Two more collections of Nasser\u2019s poetry have been translated to English. The travel-poems in\u00a0Petra,\u00a0<\/em>translated by Fady Joudah, formed a collection I carried around in my bag for weeks, drawing it out to read and re-read at odd moments. This collection of travel-poetry is a must-read for anyone who has visited Petra, will visit to Petra, or wants to imagine the great Jordanian archaeological site and its histories. Nasser\u2019s\u00a0A Map of Signs and Scents: New and Selected Poems, 1979\u20132014<\/a>, <\/em>brings together poems from three decades worth of collections,\u00a0translated by Joudah and Mattawa. That collection, which contains\u00a0Petra, <\/em>was longlisted for the 2017 National Translation Award<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are several moving essays in Akhbar al-Adab. <\/em>Hoda Barakat\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>opens, roughly:<\/p>\n

I came late to reading Amjad Nasser. But from the time the first poem from the first collection fell into my hands, I knew that I would read everything he had written and was writing.<\/p>\n

His books are in my office on the shelf by the sofa, and I return to them often. No friendship brings us together; I don\u2019t think I have ever met him, even by accident. I did not look for a meeting, and I would have avoided such a conversation had the chance been foisted upon us. For the poet puts in his writing that which carries me to meet him whenever I read him, as a true brother-in-spirit. And, as usual, I am afraid of betrayal, of disappointment, as personal knowledge can fix a low ceiling over a beautiful imagination\u2026<\/p>\n

And Amjad Nasser is one of those rare people who pushes you to write after reading him, after you wolf down his words, line by line. His little voice directs me to the characters in my own novels, and sometimes I imagine he is talking to them. Or standing next to one, behind a window somewhere.<\/p>\n

Nasser is also known for his justice-driven politics and long-time support for Palestinian rights, which is presumably what earned him a block from US Homeland Security.<\/p>\n

In a quick interview several years ago<\/a>, I asked Nasser about the role of the writer: \u201cSociety doesn\u2019t have a particular responsibility towards the writer or poet or artist in general. They\u2019re a part of society, not above it, and not on its margins either. The right thing is for them to be a part of society, and when they are, they will fight for the freedom of this society, its human as well as financial development, and for its legal and civil rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

The poet, novelist, journalist, and editor will be greatly missed.<\/p>\n

His recent poems<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Facebook;<\/a>\u00a0not yet in translation<\/p>\n

Translated by Sinan Antoon:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Adam\u2019s Kingdom<\/a><\/p>\n

Song of Myself<\/a><\/p>\n

If You Are Passing Through Rome<\/a><\/p>\n

Do Not Do What the Romans Do<\/a><\/p>\n

Translated by Fady Joudah<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Postponed Poem for New York<\/a><\/p>\n

03-03-03<\/a><\/p>\n

Meritocracy<\/a><\/p>\n

Translated by Atef Alshaer:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Delirium<\/a><\/p>\n

Mothers<\/a><\/p>\n

A Perfect Pony<\/a><\/p>\n

To Mark Strand<\/a><\/p>\n

Translated by Khaled Mattawa<\/strong><\/p>\n

A Resemblance<\/a><\/p>\n

Phases of the Moon in London<\/a><\/p>\n

Translated by Camilo Gomez-Rivas<\/strong><\/p>\n

Old Radio<\/a><\/p>\n

Seven Bridges<\/a><\/p>\n

Poems translated by the\u00a0Poetry Translation Centre:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Poet<\/a><\/p>\n

Stone<\/a><\/p>\n

Savannah<\/a><\/p>\n

Interviews and reviews:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Amjad Nasser: \u2018Without the Other, There Is No Self\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Amjad Nasser: \u2018We Have to Listen More to Reality Than We Used To\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Amjad Nasser\u2019s \u2018Here is the Rose\u2019: \u2018We Can No Longer Tell Tragedy from Farce<\/a><\/p>\n

The Lyric, Slapstick, Romantic, Academic \u2018Land of No Rain\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Also:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018When Your Name is on the Blacklist<\/a>\u2018<\/p>\n

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

Via the always excellent ArabLit\u00a0came the news this morning of Amjad Nasser’s illness. I met him many years ago, in Paris, & he & his writing were immediately very close to me. It was...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16613,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,91,103],"tags":[1583],"class_list":["post-16610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arab-culture","category-poetry","category-translation","tag-amjad-nasser"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16610","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=16610"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16615,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16610\/revisions\/16615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}