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Contributor

Iman Mersal

Portrait of Iman Mersal
Copyright © Bertrand Gaudillère
Contributor

Iman Mersal

Iman Mersal is an Egyptian poet, essayist, translator and literary scholar, and Associate Professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Alberta, Canada. She is the author of five books of Arabic poetry, selections from which have been translated into numerous languages. In English translation, her poems have appeared in The New York Review of BooksParnassusParis ReviewThe NationAmerican Poetry Review, among others. A selection of Mersals poetry, entitled These Are Not Oranges, My Love, translated by the poet Khaled Mattawa, was published in 2008 (Sheep Meadow Press- NYC). Another selection is forthcoming in Spring 2022 from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, translated by Robyn Creswell. Her most recent publications include Kayfa Taltaim: An al-Umuma wa Ashbahiha (Kayfa Ta and Mophradat, 2017), translated into English by Robin Moger as How to Mend: Motherhood and its Ghosts (Kayfa Ta and Sternberg Press, 2018). Fi Athar Enayat al-Zayyat  (In the Footsteps of Enayat al-Zayyat, 2019) has been translated into French by Richard Jacquemond, as Sur les traces d’Enayat Zayyat, Actes Sud. The book was awarded the prestigious Shaykh Zayed award for literature in 2021.

Articles by Iman Mersal

I Have A Musical Name
By Iman Mersal
Maybe the window I sat by foretold an unusual glory.
Translated from Arabic by Khaled Mattawa
Happiness
By Iman Mersal
I have no patience to contemplate the sea
Translated from Arabic by Khaled Mattawa
In Perfect Happiness
By Iman Mersal
I will make sure they are really there / in perfect happiness, / and that I am alone
Translated from Arabic by Khaled Mattawa
He Marks the Weak Point
By Iman Mersal
Of course,the concrete pillars are not lacking in delicacy,and the columns of old houses are a nostalgia all their own.He added that he marks the weak pointand distributes its weight among the relatively…
Translated from Arabic by Khaled Mattawa
Sometimes Wisdom Possesses Me
By Iman Mersal
One day wisdom will possess me / and I will not go to the party.
Translated from Arabic by Khaled Mattawa
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I Look Around Me
By Iman Mersal
as a silent way of killing- / but flashing glances / from eyes I barely glimpse
Translated from Arabic by Khaled Mattawa
Things Elude Me
By Iman Mersal
One day I will pass by/ the house that used to be my home.
Translated from Arabic by Khaled Mattawa
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Amina
By Iman Mersal
My perfect friend, / why don't you leave now.
Translated from Arabic by Khaled Mattawa
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