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Contributor

Vénus Khoury-Ghata

Contributor

Vénus Khoury-Ghata

Vénus Khoury-Ghata is a Lebanese poet and novelist who lives in France. She received the Prix Mallarmé in 1987 for Monologue du mort, the Prix Apollinaire in 1980 for Les Ombres et leurs cris, and the Grand Prix de la Société des gens de lettres for Fables pour un peuple d'argile in 1992. Her Anthologie personelle, a selection of her previously published and new poems, appeared in 1997. Her other collections include Elle dit (1999); La Compassion des Pierres (2000) and Quelle est la nuit parmi les nuits (2004). Her volumes in English, translated by Marilyn Hacker, include Here There Was Once a Country (2000); She Says (2003); and A House at the Edge of Tears (2005).

Articles by Vénus Khoury-Ghata

Dead
By Vénus Khoury-Ghata
the mother looked like the linden tree in the square like the wood of the table on which she wrote our faces like the log that didn’t sweat or complain about the smoke dead she began to avoid us…
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
Multilingual
As night became talkative
By Vénus Khoury-Ghata
we were lent a window on a fragment of the world We we re the house and the road that led to the house The mother moved the door each time a train went by and at each procession toward     the…
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
Her apron drawn on her skin
By Vénus Khoury-Ghata
the mother sent us out in the street naked Walnut husks served us for ink Fences we’d jumped were the pages we leafed through Euphoria in the evening when she multiplied her arms two to embrace…
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
Multilingual
It was a November of bitter rain and snow blackened by use
By Vénus Khoury-Ghata
we filed the dead leaves by size to ease the task of the forest that was absent for     reasons known only to itselfThe parents had left with the doorWe mistook puddles for creekspebbles…
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
Multilingual
God, the mother claimed, is behind every tree in the forest
By Vénus Khoury-Ghata
his right shoulder lower than his leftheavy with rocky snowfalls from such enduranceIt’s his motionless breath that fissures our walls in the night when one winter hands   power over to…
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
Multilingual
Helicopter seeds on a maple tree
Photo by bales on Unsplash
When did their language mingle with ours
By Vénus Khoury-Ghata
The female branches made off with the laundry on our lines
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
Multilingual
How to find the mother when her face disappeared behind the hills
By Vénus Khoury-Ghata
How to find the mother when her face disappeared behind the hills leaving us a body without contours two packets of cold for the armpits white grass for the pubis   Gone off with her friend the fire…
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
Multilingual
Crazy Zarifé
By Vénus Khoury-Ghata
It was because of a star that appeared between the Great Bear and the Little Bear that the goats in a village in northern Lebanon ate the French essays of the eighth-grade primary class.Engrossed in watching…
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
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