The shutters by Ahmed Bouanani and translated by Emma Ramadan

This is poetry from Morocco.

The shutters by Ahmed Bouanani translated by Emma Ramadan is published by New Directions. This is a Book originally written in French. This was published in 2018.0 and has the ISBN of 9.780811227841E12.

The shutters, by Ahmed Bouanani and translated by Emma Ramadan from French, brings Morocco French-language poetry into English through shutters, secrecy, and the half-closed architecture of memory. 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 windows, shadow, rooms, and the decision to reveal or withhold what has happened, 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. The shutters belongs in the translated poetry library because it gives Moroccan literature a cinematic and interior field of attention.

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.