Arabic Poetry in the 21st Century : Translation and Multilingualism

This talk shows how the Arabic poem becomes a manifestation of multilingualism and translation in the work of such contemporary Arab prose poets as Nāẓim al-Sayyid, (b. 1975, Lebanon), Sāmir Abū Hawwāsh (b.1972, Lebanon/Palestine), and Jūlān Hājī (b. 1977, Syrian/Kurdish). For this generation of poets, the launching is a point of traffic between languages. Even if some of them only speak and write in Arabic, it remains a language infiltrated by other languages. It is the Arabic of the information age, of texting and chatting, of emails, of bilingual and multilingual speakers; the Arabic shaped by the experience of 21st century’s “polyglot tribe.”

Speakers

• Huda J. Fakhreddine, Assistant Professor of Arabic Literature, The Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania