Ghassan Zaqtan
Étrangers en manteau léger : poèmes choisis 2014-2020Strangers in light Coats: selected Poems 2014-2020106 pages | 11 - 300 words. Originally written in Arabic. Published in English translation in 2023. All language rights available except English and Arabic
The Arab List
POETRY
Ghassan Zaqtan est non seulement l'un des poètes palestiniens les plus importants, mais aussi l'un des poètes les plus importants de langue arabe.
Strangers in Light Coats rassemble des poèmes écrits entre 2014 et 2020, tirés de six volumes de poésie. Attrapant et retenant dans leur gravité les plus petites particules d'observation et d'expérience, les poèmes germent et grandissent comme s'ils étaient contraints, une transe du processus dans laquelle la fable, le mythe et l'élégie prennent forme pour ensuite se désagréger et se reconfigurer, chaque ligne étant ramassée par la suivante et introduite dans le nouveau corps.
Ghassan Zaqtan est un poète, romancier et éditeur palestinien, né près de Bethléem et ayant vécu en Jordanie, en Syrie, au Liban et en Tunisie. Il est l'auteur de nombreux recueils de poésie, de plusieurs romans et d'une pièce de théâtre, The Narrow Sea, qui a été primée au festival du Caire en 1994. Son recueil de poésie Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, traduit par Fady Joudah, a reçu le Griffin Poetry Prize en 2013. Zaqtan a été nominé pour le prix international de littérature Neustadt en 2014 et 2016. Son nom est apparu pour la première fois en 2013 parmi les favoris pour le prix Nobel de littérature.
Ghassan Zaqtan is not only one of the most significant Palestinian poets at work today, but one of the most important poets writing in Arabic. Since the publication of his first collection in 1980, Zaqtan’s presence as a poet has evolved with the same branching and cumulative complexity as his poems—an invisible system of roots insistently pushing through the impacted soil of political and national narratives.
Strangers in Light Coats is the third collection of Zaqtan’s poetry to appear in English. It brings together poems written between 2014 and 2020 drawn from six volumes of poetry. Catching and holding the smallest particles of observation and experience in their gravity, the poems sprout and grow as though compelled, a trance of process in which fable, myth, and elegy take form only to fall apart and reconfigure, each line picked apart by the next and brought into the new body.
Ghassan Zaqtan is a Palestinian poet, novelist and editor, who was born near Bethlehem and has lived in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Tunisia. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry, several novels and a play, The Narrow Sea, which was honoured at the 1994 Cairo Festival. His verse collection Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me, translated by Fady Joudah, was awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize for 2013. Zaqtan was nominated for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in both 2014 and 2016. His name appeared for the first time in 2013 among the favourites to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
PDF of English translation available
‘What does poetry do? Nothing and everything, like air, water, soil, like birds, fish, trees, like love, spirit, our daily words . . . It lives with us, in and outside us, everywhere, all the time, and yet, we are too often oblivious of this gift. It’s a poet’s job to bring this gift out and back, this gift that makes us human again. And Mr. Zaqtan has done it. His poetry awakens the spirits buried deep in the garden, in our hearts, in the past, present and future.’—Judges’ citation, Griffin Poetry Prize