#André Naffis-Sahely

[bones-ivy-breath]

Pour rassembler les continents (To bring together the continents) de Rodney Saint-Éloi (tr. André Naffis-Sahely)

#pour rassembler les continents #Rodney Saint-Éloi #quote #typography #poetry #aesthetic #dark academia #light academia #french academia #frenchblr #literature #poets of color #haitian poets #André Naffis-Sahely #light

[zelihatrifles]

Damn whoever said

that hell was down below;

they clearly never went there.

#andré naffis-sahely #poetry #reading #currently reading #anti discrimination #blacklivesmatter

[kitchen-light]

If my tears were not so bitter I could believe that they were rivers of that holy place.

Ibn Hamdis, from his poem ‘Oh sea, you conceal my paradise’ (translated from the Arabic by Justin Vitiello), (found in “The Heart of a Stranger | An Anthology of Exile Literature”, edited by André Naffis-Sahely, Pushkin Press, 2019)

#ibn hamdis #quotes #poetry #words #found* #on saudade

[queerafricans]

Spring by Rachid Boudjedra. Translated from French by André Naffis-Sahely.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: Spring (Printemps), which was published by Grasset in April 2014, is set in Algiers between early 2011 and 2013. Teldj, a former 400m hurdles Olympic medalist, is gay, in her thirties, and teaches at the University of Algiers. As Teldj watches the events of the Arab Spring unfold, she exhumes memories from her personal past, as well as her country’s recent history, most notably the Civil War, which claimed hundreds of thousands of victims during the 1990s.

#algeria #literature #tw #war #civil unrest

[pairedaeza]

So distant from my memories, my people fight, their eyes tanned by the sun, their gazes fixed on the desert encampments, the perfume of nostalgia weighs down my thoughts, pain desiccates my heart, like a flower you try to keep alive despite the lack of its mother’s sap.

Souéloum Diagho trans. André Naffis-Sahely, from ‘Exile gnaws at me’. Published in amberflora.

#souéloum diagho #andré naffis-sahely #amberflora

[arablit]

Friday Finds: 'The Earth Opens and Welcomes You,' by Abdellatif Laâbi

Friday Finds: ‘The Earth Opens and Welcomes You,’ by Abdellatif Laâbi

Goncourt-winning Moroccan poet Abdellatif Laâbi — co-founder of the seminal journal Souffles — has been recorded, for the Poetry Translation Centre, reading “The Earth Opens and Welcomes You” together with André Naffis-Sahely, who reads his English translation:

  https://soundcloud.com/poetrytranslationcentre/the-earth-opens-and-welcomes-you-by-abdellatif-laabi

The poem can be found in the PTC…

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#Abdellatif Laâbi #André Naffis-Sahely

[kenneturner]

Greater Roadrunner

Greater Roadrunner (Sabino Canyon) — Image by kenne The desert is human endeavour’s most fitting graveyard;   the slow bleaching, the gradual eroding into sand, the heat stifling sound as it leaps into the air. IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE. But it always does.   — from Roadrunners by André Naffis-Sahely

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#André Naffis-Sahely #Greater Roadrunner #Photography #Poetry #Sabino Canyon Recreation Area #Southern Arizona Roadrunners #Tucson Arizona

[missedstations]

“My Mother’s Language” - Abdellatif Laâbi

It’s been twenty years since I last saw my mother She starved herself to death They say that each morning she would pull her headscarf off and strike the floor seven times cursing the heavens and the Tyrant I was in the cave where convicts read in the dark and painted the bestiary of the future on the walls It’s been twenty years since I last saw my mother She left me a china coffee set and though the cups have broken one by one they were so ugly I didn’t regret their loss even though coffee’s the only drink I like These days, when I’m alone I start to sound like my mother or rather, it’s as if she were using my mouth to voice her profanities, curses and gibberish the unfindable rosary of her nicknames all the endangered species of her sayings It’s been twenty years since I last saw my mother but I am the last man who still speaks her language

Translated by André Naffis-Sahely

#Poems #Abdellatif Laâbi #My Mother’s Language #André Naffis-Sahely

[queenlua]

i always kinda wondered why Robinson Jeffers’s poetry isn’t more widely known

and apparently half the answer is “isolationism was not a popular political stance in Cold War-era USA” lol:

When Jeffers’s fourteenth collection, The Double Axe – which included the aforementioned poems – was finally published by Random House in July 1948, no less than eleven poems were censored and it notoriously carried a ‘disclaimer’ in the form of a ‘Publisher’s Note’: “Random House feels compelled to go on record with its disagreement over some of the political views pronounced by the poet in this volume.” Predictably enough, the pundits unsheathed their knives. Time magazine’s ‘The Year in Books’ aptly summed up its reception, dismissing The Double Axe as a “crabbed” collection “which most critics resented for its arrogant, unyielding isolationism.”

[zmkccommonplace]

From Modern Poetry in Translation, by Ribka Sibhatu, translated by André Naffis-Sahely

#poetry

[bookthreat]

Squinting Towards Gibraltar

An Eternity in Tangiers by Faustin Titi and Eyoum Nganguè. Translated by André Naffis-Sahely. Phoneme Media, 2017. 9781939419798. 47pp plus an afterward.

Nganguè is a Camaroonian journalist living in Paris. Titi is an Ivorian artist living in Abidjan. Together they have created a short, compelling, beautifully drawn graphic novel about a young man from a fictional African city on the Atlantic…

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#graphic novel

[bones-ivy-breath]

Pour rassembler les continents de Rodney Saint-Éloi (tr. André Naffis-Sahely)

Translation:

A poetry of witness speaks the words in which dreams sleep

#Pour rassembler les continents #Rodney Saint-Éloi #quote #french academia #français #littérature #poésie #dark academia #light academia #citation #typography #To bring together the continents #poetry #André Naffis-Sahely #frenchblr

[artbookdap]

🍾 Congratulations @wakefield_press — intrepid publisher and first-time-translator of overlooked gems and literary oddities — on the launch of your new eBooks program! 🎊⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Now available for Apple devices, Kindle and Nook, some of the coolest, most provocative and challenging literary titles on our list!⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Pictured here:⁠⠀ 'Pataphysical Essays' by René Daumal. (Translated by Thomas Vosteen.)⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ 'The Sundays of Jean Dézert' by Jean de La Ville de Mirmont. (Translation by André Naffis-Sahely.)⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ 'Sweating Blood' by Léon Bloy. (Introduction and translation by Erik Butler.)⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ 'The King in the Golden Mask' by Marcel Schwob. (Translated with introduction by Kit Schluter.)⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ 'The Young Girl's Handbook of Good Manners for Use in Educational Establishments) by Pierre Louÿs.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ 'Treatise on Elegant Living' by Honoré de Balzac.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ (see previous post for the complete list)⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Read more about the eBooks via linkinbio.⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ #wakefieldpress #wakefieldebooks⁠⠀ https://www.instagram.com/p/CFSHjzOpZSa/?igshid=2zxf4rimpn4f

#wakefieldpress #wakefieldebooks

[doorsclosingslowly]

In Lampedusa by Ribka Sibathu (trans. André Naffis-Sahely)

On 3rd October

a barge carrying 518 people

arrived in Lampedusa

Having survived a brutal dictatorship

and a journey full of pitfalls

they stood atop their raft in the dead of night

and saw the lights of the promised land

Believing their suffering had reached an end,

they raised a chorus and praised the Virgin Mary.

While waiting for those ships to rescue them,

men and women, children and grownups,

the sick and the healthy began to sing hymns!

ስምኪ ጸዊዐ መዓስ ሓፊረ፣

I wasn’t ashamed when I called out Your name,

ማሪያም ኢለ ኣበይ ወዲቐ:

I called out to Mary and didn’t fall

ስምኪ እዩእ’ሞ ስንቂ ኮይኑኒ:

Your name sustained me throughout my journey

እንሆ ምስጋናይ ተቐበልኒ!

and here is the grateful echo of the song I raise to thank you!

Suddenly the raft

started filling with water;

they began flashing

red lights to sound the alarm;

switched their lanterns on and off!

Alas, all was quiet on the island.

Meanwhile the water rose, stoking fears the ship would sink.

To send a distress call,

they set a sail on fire, and as the

flames began to spread, some frightened people

jumped overboard and tipped the boat.

They were all adrift in the freezing sea!

Amidst that storm, some died right away,

some beat the odds and cheated death,

some who could swim tried to help

some drowned using their last breath

to send messages back to their native land,

some called out their names and countries of origin

before succumbing to their fate!

Among the floating corpses

Mebrahtom raised a desperate cry

Yohanna! Yohanna! Yohanna!

But Yohanna didn’t answer;

all alone, and in

an extreme act of love,

she brought her son into the world,

birthing him into the fish-filled sea:

yet nobody in Lampedusa

heard the seven ululations welcoming his birth!

እልልልልልልልልልልልልልልል

Because after a superhuman struggle

Yohanna died alongside her son,

who never saw the light of day

and perished without even… drawing his first breath!

A baby died

drowned in the salty sea!

The baby was born and died

with its umbilical cord still unsevered!

A woman died while giving birth!

368 people died! 357 Eritreans died!

On 3rd October

3000 feet from Rabbit Island,

in the heart of the Mediterranean,

a tragedy struck the Eritrean people,

one of many they have endured.

#poetry #murder #fortress europe kills #SoundCloud

[steven792]

Songs of Protest from Bisbee and Los Gatos, by André Naffis-Sahely Tour guide at the Queen Mine in Bisbee / Photo by Scott Durgan / Flickr Last summer, I spent July and part of August in a straw-bale house in Cochise County, less than half an hour north of Bisbee, Arizona, putting the finishing touches on my latest project, …

#bibliophile #books #Literary

[pairedaeza]

Your blog inspired me to read more poetry✨ Can you recommend me a few books to get me started?

Hi, I’m happy to hear that. I’m going to recommend a range of poetry books from various time periods and different parts of the world - I hope you find something you like. This isn’t meant to be comprehensive, but hopefully it’ll be a point from which you can continue to explore what you like. 

- Tennyson: Poems (by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, edited by Peter Washington)- The Essential Rumi (by Jalaluddin Rumi, tr. Coleman Barks)- If Not, Winter (by Sappho, tr. Anne Carson)- Autobiography of a Goddess (by Andal, tr. Priya Sarukkai Chabria)- Averno (by Louise Glück)- Selected Poems (by Federico Garcia Lorca, tr. Martin Sorrell)- Beyond the Barbed Wire: Selected Poems (by Abdellatif Laâbi, tr. André Naffis-Sahely)- On Love and Barley: The Haiku of Basho (by Matsuo Basho, tr. Lucien Stryk)- The Iraqi Nights (by Dunya Mikhail)- Selected Poems (by Octavio Paz)- The Wasteland and Other Poems (T. S. Eliot)

Happy reading x