Olive Trees’ Jazz by Samira Negrouche and translated by Marilyn Hacker

This is poetry from Algeria.

Olive Trees’ Jazz by Samira Negrouche translated by Marilyn Hacker is published by Pleiades Press. This is a Book originally written in French. This was published in 2020.0 and has the ISBN of 9.780997099454E12.

Olive Trees’ Jazz, by Samira Negrouche and translated by Marilyn Hacker, has a title that moves beautifully between rootedness and improvisation. Olive trees imply age, place, Mediterranean endurance; jazz brings syncopation, variation, breath, and risk. Negrouche is an Algerian poet whose work often travels between languages, geographies, and artistic forms, and Hacker is a translator especially alert to music and measure. I would read this book for its ability to let landscape become performance, and performance become a way of thinking through history. The poems seem likely to carry political and intimate weather at once, but their title insists on rhythm first. Translation here feels less like transfer and more like accompaniment.

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.