Uplifting Palestinian voices: Lit Youngstown hosts online seminar featuring poets
Local organizations will host a virtual speaking event featuring poets and translators coming together to celebrate Palestinian poetry and literature.
Lit Youngstown, Action Books, World Poetry Books and Elizabeth’s Bookshop and Writing Center present Uplifting Palestinian Voices.
On Jan. 24, Uplifting Palestinian Voices will feature readings by four international poets, as well as four translators.
During the online seminar, viewers will hear from poets Ghayath Almadhoun, Olivia Elias, Philip Metres and Deema Shehabi.
Translators Catherine Cobham, Sarah Riggs, Jérémy Robert and Marie Silkeberg will also be in the seminar.
The presenters are all from five nations on three different continents and are coming together to discuss Palestinian culture and history.
It’ll available to watch on Lit Youngstown’s YouTube page starting at 1 p.m.
Here’s some background about each of the poets, courtesy of Lit Youngstown:
Philip Metres has written twelve books, including Fugitive/Refuge, Shrapnel Maps and Sand Opera. Metras is the winner of Guggenheim and Lannan fellowships, as well as three Arab American Book Awards. He is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University. He believes in a free Palestine.
Olivia Elias was born in Haifa in 1944. She’s lived in Lebanon, Canada and France and she writes in French. Her poetry appeared in numerous reviews and anthologies. She recently published two poetical collections: Chaos, Crossing and Your Name, Palestine (World Poetry editor).
Ghayath Almadhoun has published four collections of poetry, including “Adrenaline.” He’s a Palestinian poet born in Damascus in 1979 and immigrated to Sweden in 2008. According to his website, his poems have been featured in several collections, and he also wrote Till Damaskus with Swedish poet Marie Silkeberg. Till Damaskus was included in the list for best new books on “Dagens Nyheter,” the largest Swedish newspaper. His poetry collection “ik hier jij daar” (Uitgeverij Jurgen Maas) was one of the top 10 poetry books in Belgium for weeks in 2017.
Deema Shehabi is the author of Thirteen Departures from the Moon and co-author with Marilyn Hacker of Diaspo/Renga. Shehabi is Palestinian and was born and raised in Kuwait. Her poetry has also been featured in publications like The Kenyon Review, Literary Imagination, Pen America, The Poetry of Arab Women, So We Can Know, Letters to Palestine and Inclined to Speak.
Here’s some background about the translators:
- Sarah Riggs is a poet based in New York; her eighth book Lines is coming out with Winter Editions in 2025. She translates poetry from the French, including Etel Adnan, Olivia Elias, and Souad Labbize. She has co-edited with Omar Berrada Another Room to Live In: 15 Contemporary Arab Poets, coming out with Litmus Press from the Tamaas Poetry Translation Seminars.
- Jérémy Victor Robert is a translator who works and lives in his native Réunion Island. Together with Sarah Riggs, he translated Olivia Elias’s Your Name, Palestine into English (World Poetry Books, 2023). He published French translations of Donna Stonecipher’s Model City (joca seria, 2020), and Etel Adnan’s Sea & Fog (L’Attente, 2015).
- Catherine Cobham taught Arabic language and literature at the University of St Andrews for many years and has translated the work of a number of Arab writers, including poetry by Mahmoud Darwish, and fiction by Yusuf Idris, Naguib Mahfouz, Hanan al-Shaykh and Fuad al-Takarli.
Marie Silkeberg lives in Stockholm and works as a poet, translator and poetry filmmaker. She wrote nine collections of poetry, including Till Damaskus with Ghayath Almadhoun. Silkeberg has translated Danish poet Inger Christensen and worked with poets like Almadhoun on films about their writing.
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