Palestinian Poetry in Translation: Language, Displacement, and the Work of Witness

Arabic, French, and the question of what a Palestinian poem carries

The Language Question in This Index

Palestinian poetry reaches English readers primarily through Arabic — but not entirely. This index holds a linguistic complexity the national label doesn’t resolve cleanly. Mahmoud Darwish and Ghayath Almadhoun both wrote in Arabic. Olivia Elias, by contrast, writes in French — a Palestinian poet working in the language of another colonial history, whose Chaos Crossing, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid for World Poetry Books, sits in the index as a reminder that Palestinian literary identity is not confined to a single language. These distinctions matter because they affect how translation works: translating Arabic into English is a different act from translating French into English, even when both poems are Palestinian.

Mahmoud Darwish and the Weight of a Central Figure

Mahmoud Darwish is the poet through whom most English-language readers first encounter Palestinian literature, and his presence here — Unfortunately, It Was Paradise in a collaborative translation by Munir Akash, Carolyn Forché, Sinan Antoon, and Amira El-Zein from University of California Press — raises a question the index holds open rather than answers: what does it mean to translate the central poet of a displaced national literature? Darwish’s work is not simply poetry that happens to be Palestinian; it is poetry that has served as cultural and political testimony in direct and conscious ways, and translations of it carry that weight into English whether they intend to or not. The four-translator team here reflects both the scope of the project and a collaborative ethics toward work of this magnitude.

Fady Joudah, Kareem James Abu-Zeid, and Huda Fakhreddine: The Translator Network

Three translators carry the majority of this index, and their convergence is worth naming as a structural fact about Palestinian poetry in English. Fady Joudah — himself a poet as well as a translator — appears twice with Ghassan Zaqtan, whose The Silence That Remains and Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me are the two most sustained engagements with a single contemporary Palestinian poet in the index. Kareem James Abu-Zeid translates Najwan Darwish for Yale University Press and Olivia Elias for World Poetry Books. Huda Fakhreddine translates Ibrahim Nasrallah and Samer Abu Hawwash, both for World Poetry Books. These three translators — Joudah, Abu-Zeid, Fakhreddine — constitute something close to the institutional core of Palestinian poetry translation into English, and following their work across presses and journals extends this index considerably.

Contemporary Palestinian Poets Beyond Mahmoud Darwish

The depth of the contemporary entries here is one of the more significant features of the index. Najwan Darwish — no relation to Mahmoud — is among the most formally compressed and politically direct Arabic-language poets currently writing, and his No One Will Know You Tomorrow from Yale is the fullest English-language encounter with his work. Maya Abu Al-Hayyat’s You Can Be the Last Leaf, translated by Fady Joudah for Milkweed, and Ghayath Almadhoun’s Adrenalin, translated by Catherine Cobham for Action Books, both represent Palestinian poets navigating conditions of ongoing displacement in real time rather than historical retrospect.

World Poetry Books carries three entries in this index, more than any other press, and their sustained commitment to Palestinian voices — Nasrallah, Abu Hawwash, Elias — represents one of the more deliberate editorial positions in contemporary translation publishing.

Where I would begin

Books already catalogued here give the archive a practical first route: In the presence of absence by Mahmoud Darwish, translated by Sinan Antoon (Archipelago Books, 2011); Instructions within by Ashraf ʻAbd al-Sātir Fayyāḍ, translated by Mona Kareem (The Operating System Press, 2016); and Exhausted on the Cross by Najwan Darwish, translated by Kareem James Abu-Zeid (NYRB Poets, 2021). Mahmoud Darwish, Ashraf Fayadh, and Najwan Darwish give the current shelf distinct generations, locations, and poetic temperaments. Keeping translator names beside every title makes the route visibly collaborative.

From here, Arabic-language poetry follows one linguistic thread without mistaking it for the whole country. The translator index keeps each book’s mediation visible, while How to Read Poetry in Translation gives readers permission to begin with sensation and return to context when the poem asks for it. As the book list grows, return to it as a record of changing access rather than a final census; new translations can revise the history, surface another register, or expose a gap the current shelf could not yet show.

Further reading

• A Wave in the Sea: Najwan Darwish and Kareem James Abu-Zeid on Translating Exhausted on the Cross. Words Without Borders. Poet and translator discuss register, collaboration, and the movement of a Palestinian Arabic collection into English.
• The Shape of Time: New Palestinian Writing. Words Without Borders. An editorial frame for Palestinian literature across memory, place, exile, and changing generations.