Organized By The Poetry Center, San Francisco State University
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APRIL 5: GHASSAN ZAQTAN AND FADY JOUDAH Thursday APRIL 5: Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan Rare U.S. visit, appearing with translator Fady Joudah 4:30 pm @ the Poetry Center, HUM 512, SFSU, free Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan on a rare U.S. visit with award-winning poet-translator Fady Joudah on the publication of Like A Straw Bird It Follows Me http://www.sfsu.edu/~poetry In this inspired translation of Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, Ghassan Zaqtan's tenth and most recent poetry collection, Fady Joudah brings to English-language readers the best work by one of the most important and original Palestinian poets of our time. With these poems Zaqtan enters new terrain, expanding the vision of what Arabic poetry in general and Palestinian poetry in particular are capable of. Departing from the lush aesthetics of such celebrated predecessors as Mahmoud Darwish and Adonis, Zaqtan's daily, fragile narrative, and at times austere aesthetics represent a new trajectory, a significant leap for young Arabic poets today. In his preface to the volume, Joudah analyzes and explores the poet's body of work. "Ghassan Zaqtan's poems, in their constant unfolding," Joudah explains, "invite us to enter them, exit them, map and un-map them, code and decode them, fill them up and empty them, with the living and non-living, the animate and inanimate, towards a true freedom." Ghassan Zaqtan is the author of ten collections of poetry. He is also a novelist, editor, and filmmaker. Born in Beit Jala, near Bethlehem, he has lived in Jordan, Beirut, Damascus, and Tunis. He returned to Palestine in 1994 and now lives in Ramallah. Fady Joudah is a practicing physician of internal medicine and an award-winning poet and translator. His translation of Mahmoud Darwish's poetry, The Butterfly's Burden (Copper Canyon Press/Bloodaxe) won a TLS/Banipal translation prize from the society of authors in the UK in 2008. His second translation volume of Darwish's lyric epics, If I Were Another (FSG) recieved a PEN translation award in 2010. Fady Joudah's first book of poetry The Earth in the Attic was selected by Louise Gluck for the Yale Series of Younger Poets in 2007. His second poetry collection, Alight, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in 2013.He lives in Houston, Texas. Ghassan Zaqtan's "Like A Straw Bird It Follows Me" translated by Fady Joudah, coming in April from Yale University Press: http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300173161 Ghassan Zaqtan on the PBS News Hour http://www.pbs.org/newshour/indepth_coverage/entertainment/poetry/profiles/poet_zaqtan.html Fady Joudah on translating Ghassan Zaqtan http://blog.bpj.org/2009/03/fady-joudah-on-translating-ghassan.html http://www.sfsu.edu/~poetry https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/poetrycenter