Sinan Antoon, Postcards from the Underworld (Seagull Books, 2023).
Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?
Sinan Antoon (SA): I had been wanting to collect my translated poems in a book for some years now. The first collection of poems I published in English was The Baghdad Blues back in 2007. It was published by Harbor Mountain Press, founded by a dear friend and wonderful poet, Peter Money. This collection includes selected poems from the last fifteen years. They were published initially in Arabic in two collections: Lalylun wāḥidun fī kull al-mudun (Beirut/Baghdad: Manshūrāt al-Jamal, 2010) and Kamā fī al-samāʾ (Beirut/Baghdad: Manshūrāt al-Jamal, 2019). I had translated and published most of them in various journals. It was time for them to be gathered in one home! I realize this doesn’t answer your question directly!
J: What particular topics and issues does the book address?
SA: There is an umbilical cord linking more than half of the poems in this book to Iraq, where I was born and lived the first twenty-three years of my life. The first poem is a prayer for Iraq! They are reflections on and responses to the barbaric wars waged by the United States against the country and its people. There are a few poems dating back to the 1991 war when I was still there. One poem mourns the victims of the barbaric economic sanctions. Some poems were written in Cairo where I was in 2003 as I watched the United States wage another war and invade and occupy my hometown. The remainder of the poems grapple with what it means to be alive in these times and in a world on the verge of an abyss. This poet cannot look away, but he stops to salvage moments of bliss and beauty from the ruins of history.
J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?
SA: Some of the poems, particularly the ones translated from my last collection in Arabic, are in conversation with biblical language and symbols. Flora and fauna have become interlocutors and intimate companions and/or inhabitants of the poetic landscape.
J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?
SA: Both Paul Celan and Osip Mandelstam wrote about poems as messages in bottles to be found and read. The poems I collected in this book are, as the title declares, “postcards” from this underworld we inhabit. I hope those who read and relish poetry will receive these postcards and find what we look for in poetry.
J: What other projects are you working on now?
SA: I just finished translating The Sleep Thief from the Arabic. It is a remarkable novel by the Palestinian writer Ibtisam Azem. I had translated her second novel, The Book of Disappearance, back in 2014. The Sleep Thief was her first book and I am happy that it will be available in English soon.
Last April I published my fifth novel, Khuzāmā (in Arabic). I had started translating it last summer. The Israeli genocide in Gaza and its horrors have made it difficult to continue. I hope to get back to it soon. I have also been working, intermittently, on a book about the Iraqi poet, Sargon Boulus (1944-2007), together with a volume of his poems in English. I hope to finish them by the end of the year.
J: What, in your view, is the role of poetry in these times?
SA: These days I often return to Brecht’s words: “In the dark times/will there also be singing?/Yes, there will also be singing /About the dark times.”
They have to be mournful songs as we watch in real time Israel carry out a genocide in Gaza. The Arabs defined poetry as “saying the unsayable.” For me, poetry is a refuge and a resource to crystallize and distill all that is unsayable in the face of a cruel world. Poems are shelters for collective memory, muffled voices, and salvaged histories. . . and they are indestructible.
Excerpts from the book
Afterword
I spent the formative years of my life (1967–1991) in Iraq. Baghdad, my hometown, has a rich cultural history. The heart of pre-modern Arab/ic culture for centuries, it attracted poets and philosophers—and plundering invaders as well. In the second half of the twentieth century, when modern Iraq was a nascent and promising society, Baghdad became the centre of modern Arabic poetry when Iraqi poets staged an aesthetic revolt against traditional forms. Being an Iraqi poet means inheriting a very rich poetic tradition. The great Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, once wrote ‘be an Iraqi, my friend, to be a poet.’
I survived two wars—The Iran-Iraq War (1980–88) and The First Gulf War (1991). After leaving Iraq in 1991, I watched from afar as the United States waged another war in 2003. It invaded and occupied my city and country, to dismantle and destroy what its genocidal sanctions (1990–2003) didn’t. This is the history that informs much of my writing. I should mention that I resent how ‘our’ writings (those of us who are from the global south) are often subjected to reductive readings, and I have written and spoken against ‘the forensic interest in Arabic literature’.
The destruction of humans, habitats and homes is the legacy of colonial modernity. The United States, where I live, work and write, continues to be a most violent predator and perpetrator of destruction. As a poet, I find myself standing before the ruins of history (Iraq is but one site). It was obligatory for pre-modern Arab poets (my aesthetic ancestors and masters) to begin their poems by standing before the real or imagined ruins and remains of a beloved’s encampment to contemplate and confront time and history. I have come to appreciate this iconic topos in the last few decades. The forms in which Arabic poetry is written have changed radically, but that topos crystallizes and encapsulates our encounter, as a species, with time, nature and history. What to say and write as one stands before the ruins. The ruins of one’s life, city and homeland.
Prayer
our Iraq, which art in dust
hallowed be thy name
thy hellfire come
thy will be done on earth
as it is in heaven
give us this day our daily death
and forgive us not our betrayals
as we forgive not those who betray us
and lead us not into temptation
for we are dead tired
amen
Phosphorus
When I was a kid
the tail end of my bike
had a red reflector
It glowed in the dark
just like the eyes of a cat
illuminated by the headlights
of distant cars
Tiny bits of phosphorus
Tiny bits of phosphorus
white phosphorus
illuminated the skies of Falluja
years ago
Now
infants there are born
with two heads
or
without eyes
From the Diary of a Ghost
When I died and was on my way to the graveyard, I was told that my life as a ghost would be great and that it would compensate for the miserable life I had lived before death.
‘You will sleep all day in a comfortable grave where you can toss and turn as you wish. You will avoid all traffic, and daily suffering. You will wake up at night and roam your city freely and no one will be able to stop you and ask for your identification card. You will cross the street whenever you wish. No car will ever hit you. You will violate every law and travel to any country without having to obtain a visa. You will never feel hungry or thirsty and never experience cold or hot. No one will ever kill you, because you will be dead. You will be able to, if you wish, take revenge against your enemies. Your mere appearance will terrify those who oppressed you, who stole your money and killed you and your children. You will find pleasure in torturing them and turning their nights into hell. You will enter their houses whenever you wish. You will terrify their children and they will wet their beds. You will be the master and you will see them all kneeling before you like dogs, or running to a psychiatrist without telling anyone lest they be accused of madness. No medications will save them from you. You will return to your grave right before dawn every day, ecstatic about your power and singing your favourite song and planning for your next night.’
I have been roaming the streets of my city for many years now. No one sees me or is afraid of me. Not even the children. As for those who killed me, their fortunes have multiplied and their bellies are bigger. I sometimes get lost in their huge mansions. I often find them celebrating around their gigantic tables during laughter-filled nights. They don’t notice or care when I pass by or enter. I stand next to their beds as they sleep and scream into their ears, but all I hear is their snoring getting louder. Their dogs are the only ones who greet me, sometimes barking or wagging their tails when I leave disappointed in the early morning, embarrassed by my failure. The grave is far narrower than I had imagined. I have not slept for almost a year. My neighbour advised me to go to therapy. He, too, said he had suffered the first few years, but then come to terms with the fact that we were twice deceived. I am writing this as I wait for my appointment.
From Eve’s Confessions
I was the voice of the wind
and when it grew tired
I descended from its ribs
and left it
weeping everywhere
for me
I walked on water
a thousand years
then created myself
on the earth’s skin
and when I was bored
I made Adam
God was a mere game we played
***