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Exile

black and white drawing of a boy with smoke coming up behind him floating over a red mound
Julia Griffin, "Smoke." Copyright Julia Griffin
Three Poems
By Imran Sada’i
I sit on the shores of emptiness / and watch my soul foaming red
Translated from Uyghur by Joshua L. Freeman
MultimediaMultilingual
A black-and-white image of battered market kiosks
Photo copyright © Kseniya Fuchs
Conservation
By Kseniya Fuchs
I knew I was born here and I would die here.
Translated from Ukrainian by Ali Kinsella
Cereté, Córdoba
By Raúl Gómez Jattin
I love you all even more in exile
Translated from Spanish by Katherine M. Hedeen & Olivia Lott
The Art of Expressing One’s Agony: An Interview with M. Raouf Bachir
By Alice Guthrie
In short, the ongoing war in Syria is not a revolution.
The Memory of Our Land: Writing in and from Exile
By Susan Harris
As these writers demonstrate, there is no typical exile, and no standard response to deracination.
Exile is Born at This Moment
By Osama Esber
When blood is exiled, / nothing binds it to the race.
Translated from Arabic by the author
Exilium Ergo Sum
By Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo
It is impossible to find one's own path in literature without a certain verbal violence.
Translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel
Multilingual
The Poet Cannot Stand Aside: Arabic Literature and Exile
By M. Lynx Qualey
Exile has been one of the places where Arabic literature has been able to communicate most strongly across linguistic borders.
Exiled in Europe: An Interview with Three Women Writers
By Olivia Snaije
“Sometimes I feel like I’m a medium who brings ghosts back from the past.”
The Curse of the South
By Mohammad Ali Diriye
From now on I just have three compass points, not four.
Translated from Arabic by Xavier Luffin
Bag of the Nation
By Osama Alomar
The surprise shook me like an earthquake.
Translated from Arabic by C.J. Collins
Multilingual
On the Fourth Day
By Koulsy Lamko
Slowly but surely, exile erases us from the memory of our land.
Translated from French by Alexis Pernsteiner
Multilingual
Fragile States: Artwork from freeDimensional
By freeDimensional
A visual exploration of the physical and psychological experiences of persecution and forced displacement.
Multimedia
Poets of Protest
By Words Without Borders
Words Without Borders introduces Manal Al-Sheikh and Mazen Maarouf, two poets living in exile in Scandinavia.
Photo of the Oudezijds Kolk canal in Amsterdam
Bert Kaufmann from Roermond, Netherlands, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
from The Ministry of Pain
By Dubravka Ugrešic
Instead of talking, they seem to be patting each other with words, spreading a soothing, sonorous saliva over one another.
Translated from Croatian by Michael Henry Heim