Translations

Today I was just thinking about some of the really interesting projects I've learned that AJB is doing. They're starting a translation series, the first of which is going to be a title called "Hagar Before the Occupation, Hagar After the Occupation." The book consists of translated poems by a female Iraqi poet, who's also a journalist and activist. The poems are all set in a before/after format-- for example, "My Daughter Before the Occupation" and "My Daughter After the Occupation." I had to read the manuscript to do some research on comparable titles, and I found it incredible-- I imagine it's difficult to translate all the intricacies of Arabic into English, but still the poems are very emotionally charged. Sometimes I feel like books of poems that focus only on one specific idea can be limiting for the poet-- but in this book, I felt like the commentary on Iraq was something that needed to be written and that's important to read, especially because it's by an Iraqi poet.