Words Without Borders invites you to a multilingual reading and celebration of poetry in translation, held in partnership with the Academy of American Poets. Join us for an evening of poetry in Arabic, French, Malay, Spanish, and English, with readings by Samira Negrouche and translator Marilyn Hacker; Zahid M. Naser and translator Pauline Fan; Jeannette Clariond and translator Samantha Schnee; and translator Kareem James Abu-Zeid.
The poems featured at the reading were also published in Words Without Borders and in POETS.org’s Poem-a-Day series throughout September, which was National Translation Month. While we cannot gather in person this year, we look forward to convening virtually with you and these fantastic translators and poets based around the world to celebrate the power of poetry to bring us together across languages, cultures, and continents.
Event Details:
Tuesday, November 8, 2022, at 12:00 PM EST
PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT REQUIRES ADVANCE REGISTRATION. Upon registering, you will be signed up to receive the Zoom link thirty minutes prior to the event’s start time. Register here.
There will be closed-captioning for the English-language portion of the event, and an accessibility packet will be available.
More about our readers:
Kareem James Abu-Zeid is an award-winning freelance translator of authors from across the Arab world. His most recent translation is the Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish’s Exhausted on the Cross (NYRB Poets, 2021). He lives in the countryside just outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Samira Negrouche is a poet and translator who lives in Algiers. Her recent publications include Traces (Fidel Anthelme X, 2021) and The Olive Trees’ Jazz and Other Poems, a bilingual collection translated by Marilyn Hacker, published in 2020 by Pleiades Press, and shortlisted in 2021 for the National Translation Award in Poetry and for The Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry.
Marilyn Hacker is the author of fourteen books of poems, including A Stranger’s Mirror (Norton, 2015) and Blazons (Carcanet, 2019), two collaborative books, Diaspo/Renga, written with Deema K. Shehabi (Holland Park Press, 2014), and A Different Distance, written with Karthika Naïr (Milkweed Editions, 2021), and an essay collection, Unauthorized Voices (Michigan, 2010). She has translated eighteen books of French and Francophone poets. Her new collection, Calligraphies, will be published by W. W. Norton early in 2023. She lives in Paris.
Zahid M. Naser is a poet, literary translator, and editor from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. His debut volume of poetry, Berehat Di Sisi Paus (Pustaka Obscura, 2016), received critical acclaim. He recently completed Musim Hijrah ke Utara, a Malay translation from Arabic of Tayeb Salih’s novel Mawsim al-Hijrah ilâ al-Shamâl (Jilid, 2022).
Pauline Fan is a writer and literary translator from Kuala Lumpur. Her translation of Kulleh Grasi’s poetry, Tell Me, Kenyalang (Circumference Books, 2019), was shortlisted for the 2020 National Translation Award in Poetry. She is creative director of cultural organization PUSAKA and director of the George Town Literary Festival.
Jeannette L. Clariond is a poet and translator living in Monterrey, Mexico. She recently won the Pilar Fernández Labrador Award in Salamanca for her 2022 collection Cuerpo de mi sangre (translated to Portuguese as Corpo do meu sangue). In Italy this year, an anthology of her work was published in an Italian-Spanish bilingual edition under the title Come se il vuoto. She is a member of the Academy of the Spanish Language in the United States.
Samantha Schnee is the founding editor of Words Without Borders. Her translation of The Goddesses of Water, a collection by Mexican poet Jeannette Clariond, was published by Shearsman Books in the UK (August 2021) and World Poetry Books in the US. Her translation of Carmen Boullosa’s penultimate novel, The Book of Anna, was published by Coffee House Press last year, and her translation of Boullosa’s Texas: The Great Theft was shortlisted for the PEN America Translation Prize. She is a trustee of English PEN, where she chaired the Writers in Translation committee from 2014–17, and she currently serves as secretary of the American Literary Translators Association. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, she lives in Houston, Texas.
