Poetry

Muzaffar al-Nawwab: Disavowal

[Today marks the 78th anniversary of the founding of The Iraqi Communist Party (ICP). Its recent history, especially after the 2003 invasion and occupation, notwithstanding, the ICP has a remarkable history of struggling for justice and freedom beginning in the early decades of the 20th century. It was one of the most powerful and popular communist parties in the region. Thousands of its members gave their lives fighting against tyranny, especially under the first and second Ba`th regimes. Muzaffar al-Nawwab (1934-), one of Iraq’s greatest poets, was a member of the ICP and was imprisoned, like many others, following the 1963 Ba`th coup. One of the methods used by the ...

Sargon Boulus: The Dream of Houses

  [“Hulm al-Buyut” was published in Sargon Boulus’ posthumous collection “`Azma Ukhra li-Kalb al-Qabila” (Another Bone for the Tribe’s Dog) (Baghdad and Beirut: Dar al-Jamal, 2008)]   The Dream of Houses   There is a street somewhere lined with houses Washed by the whiteness of memory one ceiling after another I move about inside them Storming like a night Fashioning stairs out of my words Voices too faint to be heard by anyone    Inanna weaves the fog of sleep for me there with her severed hands Tonight I am a master over no one   I always find the house in the dream I open the door All that furniture devoured by ...

Al-Zahawi's Revolt in Hell (Part II)

  [This is part II of the translation. You can read the introduction and part I here and the original Arabic here.]            XVI.        Taking the dead down to hell   Jettisoned I was from the heavens, Two angels tugging my rope, Like a farmer with his cattle. Three times then, I was immersed in boiling tar, Thrown into the pit of hell,

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Al-Zahawi's Revolt in Hell (Part I)

The thawra of Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi Jamil Sidqi al-Zahawi (1863-1936) was an Iraqi poet, critical figure in the development of Arabic literary modernism, and a scholarly and outspoken contributor to political and social debates during the early part of the twentieth century. Zahawi envisaged a revolutionary role for poetry, transforming the purpose of verse into a utility by which contemporary social critiques could be posed. This is evident in his staunch support for women’s rights, his involvement in the politics of the Ottoman Empire until the constitution of 1908, his affiliation with the Young Turks, as well as his avid observation of the political currents in ...

Four Poems by Joyce Mansour

[Joyce Mansour (1928-1986) was a Francophone Egyptian poet. She published her first collection in 1953. She moved to Paris and joined the Surrealists and published sixteen books]   Blue Like a Desert   Happy are the solitary ones Those who sow the sky in the avid sand Those who seek the living under the skirts of the wind Those who run panting after an evaporated dream For they are the salt of the earth Happy are the lookouts over the ocean of the desert Those who pursue the fennec beyond the mirage The winged sun loses its feathers on the horizon The eternal summer laughs at the wet grave And if a loud cry resounds in the bedridden rocks Keep Reading »

Sargon Boulus: News About No One

["Akhbar `an la ahad" was published in Sargon Boulus' posthumous collection "`Azma Ukhra li-Kalb al-Qabila" (Another Bone for the Tribe's Dog) (Baghdad and Beirut: Dar al-Jamal, 2008)   News About No One Sargon Boulus   Those about whom we hear no news Those who are remembered by none: What wind has swept their traces as if they never were? My father and the others Where are they? Where? * What became of the man who made beds and bridal chests? Wood was so sacred to him! * Where is the silent shoemaker? Hugging the anvil chewing on his bitter nails? * His cave was full of old shoes Did they bomb it with one of those ...

"Tattoo" by Muhammad Al-Maghut

[Muhammad Al-Maghut (1934-2006), was a Syrian poet, playwright, and journalist. He is one of the pioneers of the Arabic prose poem.]   Tattoo Muhammad Al-Maghut   Now At the third hour of the twentieth century Where nothing separates the corpses from pedestrians’ shoes except asphalt I will lie down in the middle of the street like a bedouin sheikh and will not get up until all the prison bars and suspects’ files of the world are gathered and placed before me so I can chew on them like a camel on the open road Until all the batons of the police and protesters escape from grips and go back (once again) budding branches in their forests In ...

Four Poems by Mohammed Khair-Eddin

Mohammed Khair-Eddine (1941-1995) is considered one of the most compelling Moroccan writers of the twentieth century. Born and raised in the southern Berber Moroccan town of Tafraout, Khair-Eddine moved to France in 1965. In 1979 he returned to Morocco where he lived until his death in Rabat in 1995. Mohammed Khair-Eddine, along with Abdellatif Laabi and other Moroccan poets, founded the review Souffles in which they articulated “a new Maghrebian aesthetics that would include both a philosophy of action and a poetics of dream,” transcending the colonizer/colonized dialectics on which the previous generation of writers was fixated.[1] Hédi Abdel-Jaouad writes, “Along with ...

Remembering Sargon Boulus (1944-2007)

[Sargon Boulus died on October 22, 2007 in a hospital in Berlin] "What words can do / these days / Is almost nothing" wrote the Iraqi poet Sargon Boulus in “The Secret of Words,” published just weeks after he died in a Berlin hospital on October 22, 2007. Boulus always modestly undersold the power his work had in Iraqi and Arab cultural circles. One wishes he could have seen the elegies and testimonials that quickly flowed in from Iraq, from Morocco, from across the Arab diaspora. In As Safir, the Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef bemoaned the loss of "the only Iraqi poet." Some critics attacked Youssef for what they considered hyperbole, but they missed his ...