Baghdad, Mon Amour by Salah Al Hamdani and translated by Sonia Alland

This is poetry from Iraq.

Baghdad, Mon Amour by Salah Al Hamdani translated by Sonia Alland is published by Curbstone Press. This is a Book originally written in French. This was published in 2008.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781931896443E12.

Baghdad, Mon Amour, by Salah Al Hamdani and translated by Sonia Alland from French, brings Iraq French-language poetry into English through exile, city-love, and the ache of Baghdad carried through French. The metadata gives the reader a doorway, but the real value is what happens once the poem starts making its own weather. I would read it for Baghdad, love, war, and the impossible tenderness of addressing a wounded city as beloved, not as a fixed lesson about a country or period. The best entry point is still the poem itself: the line that catches, the image that refuses to explain itself, the feeling that arrives before paraphrase. Baghdad, Mon Amour belongs in the translated poetry library because it brings Iraqi memory and French-language lyric into a charged diasporic relation.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.