Khaled Mattawa

Khaled Mattawa ( born 1964) is a Libyan poet, and a renowned Arab-American writer, he is also a leading literary translator, focusing on translating Arabic poetry into English. He works as an Assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States, where he currently lives and writes. Quotes He carries in his eyes a pearl; from the ends of days and from the winds he takes a spark; and from his hand, from the islands of rain a mountain, and creates dawn. I know him—he carries in his eyes the prophecy of the seas. He named me history and the poem that purifies a place. I know him—he named me flood. Now that we have come out of hiding, Why would we live again in the tombs we’d made out of our souls? And the sundered bodies that we’ve reassembled With prayers and consolations, What would their torn parts be, other than flesh? Now that we have tasted hope And dressed each other’s wounds with the legends of our oneness Would we not prefer to close our mouths forever shut On the wine that swilled inside them? Having dreamed the same dream, Having found the water behind a thousand mirages, Why would we hide from the sun again Or fear the night sky after we’ve reached the ends of darkness, Live in death again after all the life our dead have given us? A poem on now that we have tasted hope The radio blares "Dialogue of Souls," and the woman who hated clouds watches the sky. Where is the sea now? she asks. Where is it from here? What is its name?— this rain on a morning ride to school, winter, my seventh year, my father driving through rain, his eyes fixed on a world of credit and debt. On the radio, devotion to the lifter of harm from those who despair, knower of secrets with the knowledge of certainty A poem A sense of political grievance, anger at feeling trapped (albeit in America), along with a desire to preserve something which was about to be lost, were what I had brought with me to write poetry. I was writing in English and my sensibility was rooted in a vision that needed to be translated. Not surprisingly I found great affinity in poets like Pablo Neruda, Cesar Vallejo, Constantin Cavafy, and most of all Nazim Hikmet, who happened to be poets of exile. This sense of alterity helped me connect with certain American poets too. Philip Levine’s poetry had a generous justifiable anger that I could embrace. How was that clarity of purpose we find in Levine’s work derived from his reading of Spanish poets, the ones he translated and others he read in translation, I don’t quite know. Let’s just say, as far as I was concerned, every American poet I latched into, had about him or her the scent of translation. Translation was the sweat and frankincense of home, variable and the same. Translation is something I encounter on a daily basis. As soon as I say my name I’ve put myself outside the border; I have to crawl back into the center. When a stranger asks me my name—and they ask maybe four or five times a day—every time they ask they’re telling me “I don’t know this name.” Then I have to find a way to translate or legitimate the existence of my name in this world, in their language. Translation, not alienation or estrangement, becomes a kind of existential state, a form of identity. The lack of a common language and the violence that was to be post-Qaddafi’s Libya acted like two moving walls blocking any sense of vision. Yet in Idris’s inadvertent insistence on translation I continued to see a thread of evanescence, a glimpse of the ineffable that cannot be reached but that can take one a great distance nonetheless. I saw a sense of belonging. What I saw is what Walter Benjamin spoke of in “The Task of the Translator” whereby the translator can captain us to the shores of “pure language” and where translation is “a reference to a thought in the mind of God” (76). I saw a different opportunity for both my native language—or the context of Libya—and for myself, a coming home through translation. Adonis is one of the most important poets of the Arabic language. His early writings helped bring modernist and French symbolist techniques to Arabic poetry, and he is now a postmodern cosmopolitan poet whose innovations are in step with the developments of poetry around the world. His effort in renewing Arabic poetry was matched by his rigorous examination of and expounding upon its deep roots. His poetry is thoroughly modern but also deeply informed by Arab poetics, philosophy, and theology. In an interview As a translation, and with many footnotes provided, it seems to me that all the elements of a full reception are there. The poem provides ample hints of the speaker’s sadness, confusion, and vast knowledge—but there’s a tonal element that is very difficult to replicate. Once, after a reading where Adonis read the Arabic originals and I read the English translations, the poet Jorie Graham asked me, “How come he takes much longer than you to read the same passage?” I explained that I thought it was because Adonis elongates his vowels and sort of chants his poems, which is typical of how poetry is recited in Arabic. In an interview Translated poetry opens up the possibility of our language by virtue of its unfamiliar allusions, images, and ideas, and in that sense we see our language tested and expanded by the effort to render them. Testing and expanding the language is part of writing poetry and poetic renewal, and in all the history of poetry, as far as I know, there’s never been a poetic revolution that was purely indigenous, that was not touched by translation or multilingualism. Translation is what keeps language fresh; it’s necessary for the making of new meanings. That trajectory had something to do with my visa status, of course. I was writing for the college newspaper, at Tennessee-Chattanooga, and I got my political science degree requirements, and I thought it would be good to get the economics degree requirements. I was in transition between getting permanent residence and being on a student visa, and in that transitional period, I thought it would be good if I was a full-time student. And I only needed to take nine hours in economics, and then someone said, “Well, take this course. I think you’ll like it. It’s a poetry workshop. And you’ll get the three hours you need, and there isn’t much work involved.” It was a course taught by Richard Jackson. Fiction writer’s name was Ken Smith, I remembered showing him some of my work earlier, and he thought it was interesting, but I don’t think he was going to let me into the fiction workshop. So I took the poetry workshop, and that was it. That was the first step into the poetry workshop. I think the relationship with language that developed in this book arose from the fact that I was covering multiple historical developments over a wide geographical area and involving many people speaking various languages. It was important to find a way to give each voice its individuality, to demarcate ongoing conversations, and to tell the stories, and the big story, of how many, if not most, people in the world live. The psalms signify a certain kind of utterance by various people. The haibun, of which the film treatment is one, engage a different formal tension and enact an act of witness, similarly with the ‘alams which can be read in different ways allowing for multiple narratives and interpretations. I think as a poet, perhaps from the beginning, who was drawn to be a chronicler of one’s times, I always found history — or the question of how did we get here — very important. The idea of shared, or in some cases repeated, histories is also important. When I began thinking of the poem “Occupation: An Index,” I began by focusing on Palestine, how the Palestinians are “occupied,” and how they are misunderstood, and in fact, vilified when they are the victims of colonization. Settler colonial societies like the U.S. and Israel could not help but sympathize with each other. Among the many things I love about the website and the project itself is the way that it introduces us to poets. Sometimes new poets, sometimes poets who’ve been working for a long time and we hadn’t heard from in a while. So that’s kind of the approach I took. I went through the list and of the five years of curation, and I wanted to make sure that everyone, if not almost everyone that I chose, had not been represented in the last five years. So I was keen on providing opportunities for people whom the audience of the Academy or Poem-a-Day hadn’t seen for a while or maybe not at all. And then I also began to think somewhat strategically, but also with a sense of gratitude. I’m very grateful to many of my teachers and some of them I saw had not been represented. And some other teachers that I saw were not represented, so I wanted to make sure that I pay homage to them and thank them and publish great poems that I’ve written. Another aspect is, I also was thinking of my students. Because if my teachers were, if you will, my poetic parents, if you will, by now, I have grandchildren. Poets who studied with my students are publishing works and books now. [laughs] That’s how long I’ve been in the business, if you will. So I wanted to at least catch some of my students, or some of them just had books and some of them are just kind of beginning publishing and putting a good record [sic]. It was hard to choose among them, but I just chose some that I thought should receive some recognition. In an interview with poet organisation External links Category:1964 births Category:Living people Category:Poets from Libya Category:Translators from Libya Category:University of Michigan faculty Category:Immigrants to the United States