Nouri Al-Jarrah

(Syria, 1956)

The poet and cultural critic Nouri Al-Jarrah stood out when he published his first poetry collection, The Boy, in Beirut in 1982. He has since published the following titles:  Aligning with the Voice  (London, 1988); Ode to a voice (Köln, 1990); Death’s Childhood(Casablanca, 1992); A Black Glass (1993); Poem and Poem in the Mirror (Beirut, 1995); The Ascent of April (Beirut, 1996); Hamlet's Gardens (Beirut, 2003); The Road to Damascus and The Persian Garden and The Persian Garden (2004); The Day of Cain (Haifa and Beirut, 2023); Noah's Despair (Beirut, 2014); Abel’s Elegies (2013); Four Elegies (Istanbul, 2016); and A Boat to Lesbos (2018), translated into nine languages. The most recent collection of poems by Al-Jarrah, The Stone Serpent, was published in parallel in 2022, with the Arabic edition by Al-Mutawassit Publishing House, and the English translation by Banipal Books. 

Nouri Al-Jarrah is the exponent of a modernist project. In his poetry books he establishes the voice that he has refined over time, and presents his vision of poetry and life. His poetry draws from various cultural sources and stands out for its attention to myth, legends and fairy tales, metaphysical and existential reflection. 

Al-Jarrah has founded and directed several magazines of criticism, chronicle and analysis of Arab culture. Despite their publication in London, due to the lack of freedom in the Arab states, these magazines have had a profound impact on Arabic literature and poetry, and the manifestos published in them have provoked intense debates about innovation in poetry, literature, philosophy of life and values that have long characterized Al-Jarrah's work.

His cultural work has also given a new boom to travel literature in Arabic. In 2000 he established, with Mohammed Ahmed Al Suwaidi, the Arabic Center for Literature and Geography, which awards the Ibn Battuta Prize for Travel Literature. For fifteen years it has been awarded to writers, Arabs and foreigners, who work in this field. The center also hosts an annual congress dedicated to travel literature.

Al-Jarrah's poetry is known in several languages of Asia and Europe, and his poetry collections have been published in French, Spanish and Farsi. Nouri al-Jarrah won the Max Jacob French Poetry Prize for 2023 for his book Le Sourire du dormeur, published by Actes-Sud in Paris, 2022.

Shadi Rohana

(Palestine, 1985)

Born in Haifa, Rohana is an academic and literary translator based in México City, translating between Arabic, Spanish and English.
He has introduced and translated a number of Latin American authors from Spanish to Arabic, as well as speeches and declarations from the EZLN in Chiapas. The Arabic translation of José Emilio Pacheco’s Las batallas en el desierto (Palestine, 2016) was his first novel-length work.
He graduated in Latin American Studies from Swarthmore College, USA, and has an MA from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He is currently a full-time faculty member at the Center for Asian and African Studies at El Colegio de México, where he teaches Arabic language and literature.
 

Other activities involving the participant:

An Assyrian on the streets of Paris. Biography of literary creation
Non-Hegemonic Languages in Mexico: Challenges, Possibilities, and Translation Experiences