Strangers in Light Coats by Ghassan Zaqtan and translated by Robin Moger

This is poetry from Palestine.

Strangers in Light Coats by Ghassan Zaqtan translated by Robin Moger is published by Seagull Books. This is a Book originally written in Arabic. This was published in 2023.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781803092386E12.

Strangers in Light Coats, by Ghassan Zaqtan and translated by Robin Moger from Arabic, brings Arabic-language poetry from Palestine into English through Palestinian estrangement, light coats, and the unnerving social texture of people half-seen in passage. 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 strangers, coats, light, and the civic ghostliness of moving through a damaged world, not as a fixed lesson about Palestine. 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. Strangers in Light Coats belongs in the translated poetry library because it deepens Zaqtan’s presence through displacement, perception, and haunted public space.

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.