Zaqtan and Joudah Make Shortlist for the Griffin Prize

Ghassan Zaqtan and Fady Joudah, who visited the Institute in October 2012, have been shortlisted
for Canada's Griffin Prize ("the world’s largest prize for a first edition single collection of poetry written in, or translated into English, from any country in the world"). Zaqtan's book, translated by Joudah, is Like a Straw Bird it Follows Me (English, 2012).

More about their visit:  http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/zaqtan_joudah12.html

More from the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry:
http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/awards-and-poets/shortlists/2013-shortlist/fady-joudah/

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Zaqtan in the Times Union

Paul Grondahl of the Times Union profiles major Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan, and interviews Palestinian-American poet Fady Joudah. Both will visit Albany tomorrow:

Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan, whose application for a visa was held up in a case described as "ethnic profiling," has rescheduled a hastily canceled April U.S. tour and will visit the University at Albany on Tuesday on a triumphant note.

"We are so happy to have him here finally, but it was a disappointing and frustrating case of an entrenched and bizarre U.S. bureaucracy," said Dr. Fady Joudah, a Houston physician who also is a Palestinian-American poet, winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize and a translator of the poetry of Zaqtan (pronounced ZOCK-tawn), who writes in Arabic.

Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/living/article/Poetic-license-3943081.php#ixzz29NwMLZTw

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Ghassan Zaqtan on PBS NewsHour

Tomorrow's visitor to UAlbany, Palestinian poet and Director General of the Literature Department of the Palestinian Ministry of Culture, is featured on the Poetry Series web page of The News Hour with Jim Lehrer with audio of readings in both English and Arabic.




NewsHour link: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/entertainment/poetry/profiles/poet_zaqtan.html

Here are the event details:

Ghassan Zaqtan, Palestinian poet, with Fady Joudah, Palestinian-American poet and translator
October 16 (Tuesday)
Seminar — 4:15 p.m., Campus Center Room 375, Uptown Campus
Reading — 7:00 p.m. [Note early start time], Campus Center Room 375, Uptown Campus
Ghassan Zaqtan, poet, novelist, journalist, screenwriter, and playwright, is a major Palestinian poet and a leading representative of the avant-garde in Arabic literature. His most recent collection—the first to appear in English—is Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me (2012), which was translated by Fady Joudah, a Palestinian-American poet and winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition for his own collection, The Earth in the Attic (2008). A past participant in numerous panels and colloquia with leading Israeli writers on peaceful coexistence and mutual concerns, Zaqtan is also the co-founder and director of the House of Poetry in Ramallah and is currently the Director General of the Literature and Publishing Department of the Palestinian Ministry of Culture.

Note: This event has been rescheduled from April 10, 2012.

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A Journey Through Language: Fady Joudah

Fady Joudah, Palestinian-American poet who visits the Institute tomorrow, was the subject of a New Yorker interview in 2008 regarding his award-winning translation of leading Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish's The Butterfly's Burden:

Q:What do you hope Darwish’s legacy will be?

FJ:I think it will continue to become clearer to the world of letters that Darwish’s poetry is beyond historico-political readings (like certain hackneyed readings of his poem “I’m an Arab”). He was able to forge new rhythms out of contemporary Arabic, and while this is difficult to render in translation, the focus in his work remains, as ever, his belief in the perpetual rebirth of aesthetic. Reading Darwish is a journey through language. Read more.

At UAlbany, Joudah will discuss his translation from the Arabic of Ghassan Zaqtan's Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me (Yale University Press, 2012).

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Fady Joudah: The Tea and Sage Poem

Fady Joudah, award-winning poet who visits 4/10 to discuss his translation of Ghassan Zaqtan's Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me (2012), received the Yale Younger Poets prize for his own collection, The Earth in the Attic (2008).

Here is a poem from that collection "The Tea and Sage Poem," which appears on the Poetry Foundation website:

At a desk made of glass,
In a glass walled-room
With red airport carpet,

An officer asked
My father for fingerprints,
And my father refused,

So another offered him tea
And he sipped it. The teacup
Template for fingerprints.

Poem continues....

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Advance Praise for Ghassan Zaqtan

Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, the first collection in English translation by Ghassan Zaqtan, major Palestinian poet, won't officially be published until April 24, but we will have copies on sale from Yale University Press in time for his visit on April 10. Zaqtan will share the stage with his translator, poet Fady Joudah.

Here's some advance praise on Amazon:

“Zaqtan’s poems are uncompromising in their direct engagement with daily life, detailing the way in which the quotidian is, after all, the grand narrative of history. Joudah’s brilliant translations capture not only sense, sound, and rhythm, but also pulse, infusing the English language with a new sensibility.”—Cole Swensen, Iowa Writers’ Workshop

“Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me’s generous selection of Ghassan Zaqtan’s poems, masterfully and compellingly translated by Fady Joudah, is a gift. Zaqtan is not only the most important Palestinian poet alive, but one of the most important poets of our time, embodying in various sophisticated and cosmopolitan forms of expression depths of feeling, complexity, compassion, and witness beyond compare.”—Lawrence Joseph, author of Into It

“The poet’s trade is exile, & a Palestinian poet’s trade thus a double exile: Ghassan Zaqtan’s work is exemplary in that its lyrical intensity simultaneously hides & foregrounds this quest’s epic dimensions.”—Pierre Joris, author of A Nomad Poetics

“Reading Fady Joudah’s remarkable translations of Zaqtan, I was thinking of the great poet and mythmaker of Yugoslavia, Vasko Popa, who also saw violence and wrote the dream-time of his nation. Like Popa, Zaqtan is unafraid to claim his roots, but also to see the “secret builders Cavafy had awakened / passing through the hills,” digging by his pillow. For this bravery and lyric skill, I am grateful.”—Ilya Kaminsky

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