Revolt Against the Sun by Nazik al-Malaʾika and translated by Emily Drumsta

This is poetry from Iraq.

Revolt Against the Sun by Nazik al-Malaʾika translated by Emily Drumsta is published by Saqi Books. This is a Book originally written in Arabic. This was published in 2020.0 and has the ISBN of 9.780863563171E12.

Revolt Against the Sun, by Nazik al-Malaʾika and translated by Emily Drumsta from Arabic, brings Arabic-language poetry from Iraq into English through Nazik al-Mala’ika’s modernist force, revolt, and the sun as both authority and unbearable exposure. The metadata gives the reader a doorway, but the real value is the pressure of a voice that has already changed the weather around it. I would read it for revolt, sun, form, and the pressure of a woman poet changing the weather of Arabic verse, not as a fixed lesson about Iraq. 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. Revolt Against the Sun belongs in the translated poetry library because it belongs as a foundational Iraqi and Arabic modernist work of defiance and renewal.

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.