A new publishing series that brings contemporary Arab women poets into English will launch at the Boston Public Library’s Central Library on September 16. The event will mark the arrival of Iraqi poet Hanaa Ahmad Jabr’s I Drag My Sorrow by His Collar, the first volume in Songs for Fairuz: New Arab Women’s Poetry.
Published by Black Ocean, the series takes its name from Lebanese singer Fairuz and will introduce the work of 10 Arab women poets over five years. Jabr’s first solo collection in English has been translated by Jennifer Jean, the series editor, and Wadaq Qais.
The project joins a wider range of Arabic literature appearing in English and new poetry by Arab writers over the past year. The books range from Shamma Al Bastaki’s account of communities around Dubai Creek to Lenna Jawdat’s response to the approximately 70,000 books removed from Palestinian homes and private libraries before and during 1948.
Here are some titles to check out:
You Must Live: New Poetry from Palestine
Published last September, You Must Live gathers work by more than 30 Palestinian poets from Gaza and the West Bank, most of whom are living in Palestine. The bilingual anthology is translated from Arabic and edited by Tayseer Abu Odeh and Sherah Bloor, with Jorie Graham as guest editor.
Locations and dates appear beneath many of the poems. “Gaza, 2024” is printed repeatedly, making the circumstances in which the work was written part of the book itself.
House to House by Shamma Al Bastaki
Emirati poet Shamma Al Bastaki built House to House, published last October, from interviews with people who grew up in the historic neighbourhoods around Dubai Creek. Their memories span the 1940s to the 1980s, tracing the city’s changes through accounts of homes, businesses, and daily routines.
Most of the interviews were conducted in Arabic, with some in Ajami and other languages spoken in the UAE. Al Bastaki translated much of the material into English, keeping original scripts or transliterations where the sound of a speaker’s voice was central to the poem.
The Town I Never Told You About by Ghassan Zaqtan
Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan’s latest collection, published in February, gathers poems written between 2022 and 2024 and translated from Arabic by Robin Moger. Villages and hillscapes emerge through memory, with individual recollections opening on to a longer history of displacement.
Some poems unfold over several pages, while others are built around a brief incident. Their length changes, but each returns to the hold a place retains after it has been left.
Other Paths for Shahrazad, edited by Jennifer Jean
Published in February, this bilingual Arabic-English anthology brings together 40 women poets from 11 Arab countries. The poems were selected by the Iraqi members of the Her Story Is collective and co-translated by writers working in the Arab world and North America.
The poems run in a continuous sequence, placing different countries and generations in direct conversation. Connections form through the order in which the poems appear rather than through introductory commentary from the editor.
Theories of Return by Sara Abou Rashed
Palestinian poet Sara Abou Rashed traces her family’s displacement from Palestine to refugee camps in Syria and later the US in her debut collection, published in March. Home appears as a physical place and an inheritance carried through memory.
Abou Rashed treats each poem as a separate theory of return. Together, they ask what going back might mean when a place remains inaccessible to those who remember it.
Mermaid Theory by Maya Salameh
Syrian and Lebanese American poet Maya Salameh draws on Atargatis, an ancient Syrian goddess associated with one of the earliest mermaid legends, in her second collection published in April. Salameh places that mythology within poems about migration and Arab American life, moving between Arabic and English.
The form changes throughout the book. One poem can resemble a psychological evaluation, while another reads as an incantation; elsewhere, the arrangement of words across the page becomes part of the poem.
70,000 by Lenna Jawdat
Published in July, 70,000 takes its title from the about 70,000 books removed from Palestinian homes and private libraries before and during 1948. Jawdat, a poet and psychotherapist of Palestinian and Iraqi descent, responded by writing out every number from 1 to 70,000 by hand, imagining each as one of the missing books.
The handwritten numbers run through the full-colour collection alongside Jawdat’s account of the process and her family history. Archival documents and images connect that personal act of counting to the wider loss behind it.
Thalassa by Leena Aboutaleb
Leena Aboutaleb’s debut collection, published in July, begins with the death of her brother. The Egyptian and Palestinian writer imagines descending into the underworld to search for him, giving an ancient journey the shape of personal grief.
The sea becomes the book’s central image, separating the living from the dead while offering the possibility of passage between them. Memories of her brother recur as Aboutaleb records his continued presence in family life.
Exhibit G by Fady Joudah
Fady Joudah combines poetry, essays and photographs of Gaza in Exhibit G, which will be published on September 22. The Palestinian-American poet and physician writes from the US, where he cares for patients while watching the destruction of Gaza from afar.
Photographs selected from Gaza interrupt the poetry and prose. Joudah uses that movement between image and text to examine what it means to witness the war from a distance and to write about it in English.
I Drag My Sorrow by His Collar by Hanaa Ahmad Jabr
Iraqi poet Hanaa Ahmad Jabr’s first solo collection in English will be published on October 27, opening the Songs for Fairuz series. Translated by Jennifer Jean and Wadaq Qais, the prose poems draw on Jabr’s experiences of living in Iraq through the violence of the past two decades.
Mosul often becomes the “he” addressed in the poems, taking the place of an intimate and unreliable beloved. Tea and the scent of jasmine remain close to accounts of loneliness, betrayal and war. A Boston launch for the book and series will take place on September 16, ahead of its trade publication.
Enter World by Dalia Taha
Palestinian poet and playwright Dalia Taha writes from Ramallah in Enter World, which will be published on November 3. The collection has been translated from Arabic by Egyptian poet Sara Elkamel.
Every title begins with “Enter”, borrowing a stage direction to bring a new subject into view. Taha applies it to an olive tree and to words inscribed on a prison-cell wall, using the repeated entrance to record a Palestinian world during the destruction of Gaza.
