Chronicles of Majnun Layla and Selected Poems by Qasim Haddad and translated by Ferial Jabouri Ghazoul, John Verlenden

This is poetry from Bahrain.

Chronicles of Majnun Layla and Selected Poems by Qasim Haddad translated by Ferial Jabouri Ghazoul, John Verlenden is published by Syracuse University Press. This is a Selected originally written in Arabic. This was published in 2014.0 and has the ISBN of 9.780815610373E12.

Chronicles of Majnun Layla and Selected Poems, by Qasim Haddad and translated by Ferial Jabouri Ghazoul, John Verlenden from Arabic, brings Arabic-language poetry from Bahrain into English through Arabic love legend, selected lyric intensity, and the Majnun-Layla tradition as a live reservoir rather than a museum object. Because it is a selected volume, the book also has a curatorial task: to make one poet’s range feel available without pretending to exhaust it. I would read it for desire, madness, devotion, and the way love stories keep changing when poems carry them forward, not as a fixed lesson about Bahrain. 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. Chronicles of Majnun Layla and Selected Poems belongs in the translated poetry library because it brings Bahraini Arabic poetry into relation with one of the great mythic structures of longing.

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.