Nettles by Vénus Khoury-Ghata and translated by Marilyn Hacker

This is poetry from Lebanon.

Nettles by Vénus Khoury-Ghata translated by Marilyn Hacker is published by Graywolf Press. This is a Book originally written in French. This was published in 2008.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781555974879E12.

Nettles, by Vénus Khoury-Ghata and translated by Marilyn Hacker from French, brings Lebanon French-language poetry into English through nettles, pain, and Khoury-Ghata’s fierce botanical imagination. 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 sting, plant, exile, and the way a lyric can turn vegetation into bodily memory, 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. Nettles belongs in the translated poetry library because it gives Lebanese French-language poetry a sensuous and thorned entry.

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.